Warp, Weft, and Twine
by Alinyaalethia
Summary: Not everything can be said in a letter. Life is too varied and complicated for that. From Kingsport to Ingleside, and further abroad, here are the addenda and auxiliary pieces of lives of the Blythe and Meredith children as portrayed in Everyday Courage.
1. Will Ye Not Come Back Again

_Not everything fits in a letter. And a few of you have heard me yatter on, here and there, about interstitial scenes that can't be fitted into_ Everyday Courage. _I thought it was about time I stopped with the yattering and let you have a read of them._ _Fair warning; they're very closely knit to the_ Pieces of Lives _universe, and I have a strong suspicion they won't hold up out-of-context._

* * *

September, 1922

 _We have made arrangements with the Rydals to take over Fox Corner_ , ran the latest of Mara's letters.

'Good,' said several people in chorus around the Larkrise breakfast table.

'Told you so, Kitten,' said Teddy Lovall, with the merest hint of satisfaction. Opposite him, Kitty rolled her eyes. Faith laughed. Jem fed scraps of bacon to Dog Tuesday, presently ensconced on Jem's knees, blue nose courting the tabletop.

'Someone,' said Faith, because one of their quartet had to be practical, 'should act for them on this side. Can I write back and put us forward?'

Jem shrugged, and Tuesday took the opportunity to snatch a whole piece of bacon from off his benefactor's plate.

'Please,' said Jem. 'If it brings them home faster. By all means.'

Kitty said, 'What else does Mara say?' But by then, Christopher was clamouring for attention. Faith handed over the letter, plucked the baby from his chair and left them to negotiate the conversational tangle that was a letter from Mara.

* * *

Larkrise, October, 1922

 _We could have done with your eyes on Jem's latest case_ , began Faith in the latest of the letters to Scotland. _It happened at the Kingsly farmsted in Goderich, which I hadn't realised was even in Geordie's jurisdiction, but is definitely part of Shirley's veterinary arm. I remember that because…_

On like that she went. All about Geordie's continued wonder at the workings of rural life, and the latest misadventure of Christopher, Tuesday, the Carlisle gremlins and Teddy. She glossed lightly over the hole Mara and Shirley left in their going; the way she and Judith missed that other, sane person to weather an evening of Gilbert and Sullivan with, their presence around the coffee table, lightly batting back and forth theories about the murder of the hour. _It wouldn't be fair,_ she had said to Kitty, when she raised it. Nor would it; they were coming back, eventually. That was enough. And in the meantime, Faith wouldn't grudge her friend the happiness of the holiday, the homecoming it so obviously was to look at her letters. Years, she thought, of living together, and there had never been a hint of obligation between them. No reason to start now. Leave the _wish you were heres_ and the _haste ye backs_ to other people who meant them just as much.

 _So long as they come back,_ Kitty had said, brandishing a letter replete with descriptions of an autumnal Barra. Teddy and little Christopher had seconded this opinion. Tuesday rolled luxuriantly over next to a crackling fire. Faith pressed Morris mugs of tea on all but her infant son and smiled unconcern. _They will,_ she had said, making an impossible promise. But then, she had a knack for keeping impossible promises, and anyway, they were buying Fox Corner.

 _Could be a holiday house,_ Kitty had mused, thoughtful. And Jem, ever unthinking, _Not bloody likely_ , so that Teddy yelped and clapped his hands over the baby's ears. Of course they ended in laughter. Trust Jem to see to that.

* * *

Nov. 1922

Faith was straightening the Fox Corner kitchen under the direction of Judith Carlisle when they arrived. Her hands were submerged in soapy water, rinsing the crockery that had come with the house when she heard them first; Jem's almighty yelp of surprise followed by his indignant exclamation, 'I thought pranks were _my_ territory!'

This should have eliminated the last vestiges of her surprise when icy hands descended over her eyes and a voice from behind her said in nursery-rhyme lilt, 'Leave those, they'll only end up at some church bazaar or other.' The _R_ of _bazaar_ had all the burr of a thistle. Faith would have known the speaker anywhere.

'You're not meant to be back!' said Faith, ducking out from under Mara's hands and whirling to face her. 'You never wrote – we weren't expecting you until Christmas at least – we thought – '

'Never mind all that, Parrot,' said Mara, somehow managing to manoeuvre Faith away from the sink, even still in her travelling coat. 'We're here now.'

'Clearly,' said Faith.

She had the most recent of the letters stamped across the inside of her eyes, the stormy grey of the North Sea as it boiled and bubbled mid-thunderstorm, the look of the barren gorse and the smell of the earth. With effort, she dislodged it, and seized at Mara's elbow, as if in confirmation of the reality before her. Her hands were still spackled with soap, and they left bedewed fingerprints behind in tactile testament to the reunion. 'Come on,' tugging Mara towards the sunroom, 'I want to hear all about it. You've cheated me out of one letter at the very least.'

On the sofa they fell to laughing at the luxury of being together like this again, and their laughter brought Judith. Seeing Mara, she did a credible impression of a startle hare, or as close to a startled hare as Faith reckoned Judith Carlisle was likely to get, which wasn't much. 'You knew, I suppose?' said Faith, because it had been Judith's idea to ready Fox Corner for its new owners in the first place.

'Not at all,' said Judith. 'All I knew about it was that Shirley had bought the place and where the key was. I'd have got food in for you if I'd had any warning.' This to Mara as she retreated towards the hall, coat slipping off her shoulder and over her arm along the way.

In the time it took Mara to unburden herself of coat, hat and gloves, Judith had wrangled control of the kitchen – a definite first and last, Faith thought, in the Blythe tenure at Fox Corner. There was a rush of cold air as the front door came open, and a stamping of feet on the mat as Jem's voice called out, 'You'll never guess who I've found!'

'Bet I can,' said Faith, drying her hands on her skirt. Further exclamations from the hall quarter suggested Jem had fond Mara. Judith emerged with a tea tray balanced on one arm, the bazaar-bound china imperfectly gleaming in the winter sunlight, still streaked faintly after Faith's ministrations. Somehow Judith had eked out bread, butter, and milk for the tea. Not the grandest offering Faith had known from Judith Carlisle, but then, Faith was inclined to wonder at her having unearthed food at all. They hadn't expected guests.

'You won't have eaten, of course,' Judith said, divesting herself of the tray, as if this were obvious. As she spread its contents, Mara disappeared and reappeared, tea towel on her elbow, and commenced improvements on the cumulative imperfections of the handiwork wrought by Faith and the drying rack. What she did not do, Faith noticed, was contradict Judith. Which apparently, was ammunition for Judith to press forward with her petition. 'You'll call round this evening of course,' she said now, 'for dinner. We can do you a proper meal. The gremlins will be glad to have you back.'

Shirley said something about it being Teddy Lovall the little gremlins were partial to as the tea steeped to readiness. It was a floral-scented offering of golden colour that permeated the muskiness of the house, so lately empty, and seeped readily into Faith's fingertips, still chilled and papery after their submergence in water.

'I think you'll find Tibby's rather keen on you too,' said Geordie amicably, and accepted his wife's offering of a teacup.

Chaos followed. Everyone had questions, and everyone felt theirs had a right to be answered first. Geordie was at his Inspector's best, and Judith admirably holding her own against him, while Jem, still with his adventurer's instinct, tried to steer the conversation, and Faith to talk to Mara. All the while teacups rattled against saucers in cheery counterpoint and dust eddies ran riot in the winter sunlight. Here and there the sloughing of the pine branches against the window or the bark of a fox broke through the reunion, cementing them all solidly in Kingsport. It was _good_ , Faith thought, accepting a second slice of bread, to be all together like this again. One minute she had been convinced that Jem had had the right of it, that Scotland had swallowed their friends, and now they were back and it was as if they had never been anywhere else.

Presently Mara regained control of the teapot and inquired mildly of her interloping company, 'I thought you were after a story?'

Gentle laughter as they desisted. Teacups were replenished, Judith went for more bread, and the travellers were let go long enough to surface a quantity of tablet from a nearby case. The beribboned box went all-hands-round ('Mind you save some for the gremlins!' from Shirley), and by degrees Mara and Shirley told them about Scotland, the house, the MacDairds, the landscape. It was not much that hadn't gone into letters, but it was different, Faith thought, to hear about it in person, with the sweetness of homemade tablet on her tongue and the lilt of Mara's teuchter, not yet worn smooth again, in her ear. Their pleasure in the memory of the place had the deceptive lull of a sea current. Impossible not to be swept up and under by the pull of it. Faith listened and thought it was not unlike inhaling the sun.

Pilgrim, old cat of Swallowgate, hearing them, emerged from the depths of some unsuspected corner and proceeded to mince delicately across the tea tray, lingered to lick the butter, and settled finally on Mara's knee. Absently, Mara raised a hand to his head and petted it, waving for the time being, her usual objection to his tenure in her house. Faith smothered a smile in her teacup and affected not to watch as Pilgrim stretched out, stomach exposed and purred contentedly.

Once or twice Faith caught Jem open his mouth and close it again without speaking, and supposed that he too was trying to work up sufficient nerve to ask what no one else dared; _Why come back_? Across the settle Faith raised her eyebrows at him, mutely inquiring in her turn, _Does it matter_? Jem shrugged his answer, and Faith nodded. It was enough to have them back, to be laughing and talking over tea, the purring of the cat and the air full of the smell of tablet, lye and furniture polish. Not long ago, after all, Kitty had squinted over the latest news from Scotland and said almost fiercely, 'They're not allowed to stay.'

Nor had they. The sun came slantwise through the window, illuminating the patches of rusted fur Pilgrim had long ago acquired, and Geordie began to enumerate the virtues of some new operetta the Crown Imperial was staging. Faith noticed only dimly. Let the world throw at them ever so many convoluted operettas, murders and the chaos of children. Her family were back. There was no more need for letters.


	2. Birds, Bees and Shorthand

_For Kslchen, because I think I've been promising you this particular scene for far, far too long._

* * *

November, 1922

* * *

Faith woke with the strange foot-in-water sensation, as if she were not quite on solid ground, and knew at once what it meant. It had been and gone all too recently to forget it. Christopher was wailing full-throttle from his basket, and she ought to go to him, only –only first she wanted a moment to sit and miss her mother terribly. She should have been _here_ because had she been Faith could have clutched at her skirts one last time and demanded to know _how did you do it? No one ever said Jerry was an easy baby, and I refuse to believe I was –so how in the name of God did you do it_? But of course she wasn't here, and in the absence of her mother the thought was left to wing itself restlessly heavenwards. Christopher was still wailing. Jem was beginning to wake to it. Teddy's head popped round the door and he said 'Everything all right?'

It occurred to Faith that he had had the late-night stint at the station and needed sleep. Less restlessly went heavenward _Bless Teddy_. 'Nothing we can't manage,' said Faith with a smile for him, and picked up Christopher, who was red-faced with indignation that his breakfast should be a whole minute and a half late. She settled him, and as Teddy retreated down the hall, his voice came back wry with amusement, 'The gremlins were the same –ask the Inspector sometime.'

Notwithstanding Christopher noisily feeding and kneading his fists against her breast, the thought of the Inspector, of Geordie, conjured Judith, and Faith's nerves steadied. Judith with her terrifying efficiency and advice ever at the corner of her mouth. If Faith couldn't have her mother, Judith would more than do. She smoothed the fuzz of her son's head with her unencumbered hand and said in soothing tones, 'Definitely nothing we can't manage.'

In the event though, it was Mara she told in the first instance; Mara newly returned from Scotland, to Faith's unutterable relief. Once Nan had written of the girls who pinned hopes, _We were not made for separation_ , and only now, the baby between them, did Faith look to her friend and fully grasp what Nan had meant. If Mara had not been here, the late November sun waxing grey, and the day short, how much more terrifying would be the prospect…but Mara was there, enticing little Christopher with a bauble that was one of his inheritances from the Carlisle gremlins. Nothing to worry about. Faith watched his flash of disinterest as he batted it away, and said to Mara, 'He wants to give it to you.'

'Do you then?' said Mara, as a burbling Christopher boxed with the air. She nodded, apparently satisfied and said, 'It will mean home to you of course.'

'And you?' said Faith. 'What would you give him then?'

'From home?' Mara hummed faintly, taking the question under consideration, and offering her ring finger to the baby in temporary token, risking her wedding band in the process. 'Our heather,' she said, 'white with blossoms and smelling of spring. The gorse too, even with the bristle and prickle of it, and the smell. It's sweet, almost coconut. You'd like it.' This as Christopher seized clumsily at her rings.

'I thought home was Halifax?' said Kitty from the spindly-legged table, where she sat attempting a shorthand exercise

Startled, Mara said, 'It is. Or it was. But Scotland was home first.'

'I didn't realise you remembered it,' said Faith. 'I always think of you here.'

'Yes, well, I mostly have been. There was only a handful of us as could remember – Alec would have been the last of them.'

Faith opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to risk the asking of what it was that had brought Mara and Shirley _back,_ this being the case, but Kitty got there first. She said, 'You and Teddy talk to him the same way – as if he's a small person.'

'He is,' said Mara, gently extracting her finger from Christopher's clutches. 'All children are.'

'Yes,' said Faith, who had not meant to say it, 'and it's just as well he's a small person on the verge of being usurped or he'd be in a fair way to be spoiled, between Teddy, Judith, and I don't know who else. I thought you didn't have much taste for gremlins, Ariel?'

'I don't mind when I can give them back,' said Mara, not without affection. 'Go back, though. I thought you meant to wait your gremlins a bit?'

'Oh, I did,' said Faith. 'There were grand plans. Apparently my God is a jealous god who resents my audacity in making plans and set about to overturn them. I've decided on the whole that as it's just this once, I can be tolerant.'

'I'll remind you of that next time, shall I?' said Mara with a smile.

Faith shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'there won't _be_ a next time, Ariel, because you're going to let me in on whatever charm of yours it is that works so well. I should have asked before.'

'Your _mhaither_ ,' said Mara mildly to the baby, 'talks an awful lot of nonsense, doesn't she? I suppose you're used to it?'

At the spindly-legged table Kitty's pen skittered and Faith said, apropos of nothing, 'Fox Corner has spiders, has it?'

'Not that I'd noticed, no,' said Mara.

'Well _something_ 's bitten you,' said Faith, leaning forward and touching a hand to Mara's neck, 'just there.'

Mara, who had since shifted Christopher from the floor to her arms, now shunted him deftly into the crook of an elbow and touched her unencumbered arm lightly to the place Faith had indicated. Faith was saying with vastly apparent amusement, 'Evensong would have had them too, if I'm right, only I didn't think your housekeeping would run to the allowance of spiders –it never used to –so naturally –'

'You're scandalizing poor Kitty,' said Mara, with a smile.

'Enlightening more nearly,' said Faith.

'What, with talk of spiders?'

'Naturally.'

Here Kitty's pen nib was heard to stumble, scratching badly against the paper. Her elbow shot out in compensation and overturned a bottle of ink, and flooded the room with the potent smell of ammonia and petroleum.

Kitty said, 'You're wreaking havoc on my shorthand, is all. I could _do_ 100 words a minute yesterday.'

Mara shook her head. To Faith she said, 'Remind me before I go. I'll make you an offering the next time I look in, shall I?'

'I _told_ you so,' said Faith, triumphant, laughing, reaching forward and extricating Christopher from Mara's arms.

'Not quite what you mean,' said Mara. ' Though I'm surprised at you not knowing, and you a doctor.'

'Is that what we're calling it?' said Faith, while Kitty daubed ineffectually at the ink with blotting paper.

'It's what Nan called it anyway, back when she was here with the little girls.'

'You know,' said Faith, settling Christopher back in his basket, 'I did wonder about that. Poppy too, I suppose?'

'No,' said Mara, startled. 'At least, not if you mean did I give her handfuls of Queen Anne's Lace for a wedding present. I took it for granted Mouse knew. I did, you know, and she had more sisters to choose from than I ever had.'

'Right,' said Faith. 'Of course. And you were brought round to the revelation – when exactly?'

Mara shrugged, fetched a dishrag from the Larkrise kitchen and, passed it to Kitty.

'It would have been the Christmas you nearly spent at ours,' said Mara from the kitchen, over the filling of the kettle with water. 'Senga seemed to think I'd have need of the knowing.' From her place at the table Kitty made a ball of the soiled rag and squeaked as she ducked her head.

'Now who's scandalising our resident journalist?'

'She's not,' said Kitty, managing to sound indignant in spite of the crease forming on her forehead. Now she said perplexedly, 'I didn't think people _could_ –I mean I thought –' but whatever she thought, the enormity of it defied communication.

'That terrible things befell young girls who disregarded the rules?' said Mara, not ungently over the rising boil of the kettle. Kitty turned a colour that would have done a tomato credit and squeaked her agreement on this point. Faith bit back a smile. 'Strictly speaking,' she said, 'you're not wrong. Hence all the questions from this quarter about charms.'

'I thought,' said Kitty, 'we were calling it doctoring?'

This time Faith made no effort to check her grin. She joined Kitty at the table, shook her head and said 'Only inasmuch as it isn't _really_ a spell out of a faerie story.' Then she reached out a hand and caught the tea towel Mara threw at her.

'Seriously though,' said Faith, relaxing into her chair, 'There must be a list as long as Teddy is tall of all the rules that existed before the war and have generally been broken since.

'And things don't…I don't know…end in catastrophe? Only Uncle Albion always said they would.' This from Kitty with so much earnestness that it was impossible not to smile. Faith tucked an inky hand into hers and nodding in the direction of the kitchen, and thus Mara, said 'Obviously not.'

All too often, Faith thought, with squeeze of Kitty's hand, she forgot this gangly tangle of intrepid reporter was still more girl than woman. It hadn't been all that long ago she'd appeared in Faith's room, blood instead of ink on her fingers, and said, _I can't make it stop – I've tried everything I can think of_ in tones of apology as much as unease. This wasn't so different. Granted, Faith thought with an inward smile, she hadn't anticipated having to get into the weeds of this conversation for years, at least. It featured a daughter or two, and an afternoon when Jem was out of the house. All told, then, an afternoon not unlike this one. She gave the ink-spattered hand still enfolded in hers another squeeze for good measure and supposed that really this shouldn't have surprised her.

Over the misting steam of the kettle Mara sent her a look that was obviously intended to convey _I told you you would shock her_ , but there was no heat in it. Rather, she looked decidedly playful – puckish was the word that sprang to mind – and Faith was hard-pressed not to laugh.

'But,' said Kitty, lacing her fingers through Faith's, 'I thought – well I thought that sort of thing did terrible things to your reputation.'

'Doesn't reporting?' said Mara, not without affection. That won a laugh from Kitty, bright and genuine, a counterpoint to the boiling kettle. The scream of it woke Christopher and in the ensuing chaos Mara warmed the teapot and Kitty slipped behind her to wrestle the teacups down from the lofty heights of their shelving, sending them rattling in chorus around the table as she laid haphazard places.

'Doctoring too,' said Faith, rejoining them, Christopher in her arms.

'That's not the same at all,' said Kitty. 'That's because of the men coming back…' she scrabbled for an argument and over Kitty's dark head and the farmhouse teapot, Mara and Faith traded smiles.

'Darling girl,' said Faith, 'you never think _we_ came up with all that nonsense about virtue? It being one part a woman's, one part her father's, and one part her husband's – does it _sound_ as if a sane woman would write it?'

Mara laughed. She said, 'That's one of Catkin's, isn't it? I can't think how you remembered.'

'I can't think how you didn't,' said Faith. 'It was too weird to forget.'

'Well who _did_ say it, then?' said Kitty, who had after all not lived for four years with Nan's literary quotations.

'Aristotle, I think,' said Faith. 'People have been saying things like that forever – but not usually women.'

The room filled with the dark and rich smell of Assam tea as laughter rippled around the table. Even little Christopher caught it off them, his contribution a fragmented thing, just discernible over the china rale and the wind gusting through the windows. Faith made a mental note to campaign for double glazing, or at least better sealant at the sashes when they inevitably expanded on Larkrise.

'You do all right, _a leannan_ ,' said Mara, pressing Kitty's shoulder as she passed her with the tea tray, 'if you know what you're getting into.'

Kitty appeared to take this under consideration, accepted a teacup's worth of Assam, and said as she breathed it in, 'Tell me? Just – just so I know.'

'Of course,' said Mara, and Faith nodded, awkward because of the pillow little Christopher had made of her collarbone.

There followed an instructive three-quarter hour. The tea cooled, the Assam blending with the chemical smell of spilled ink and the woody one of dying fire. Even uncertain and stilted, Kitty couldn't altogether lose her reporter's instinct, as she fired question after question across the spindly-legged table, and unfailingly, even easily, Faith and Mara took it turn about to answer. When it came to the point, Faith thought, the surprise wasn't Kitty's innumerable unknonws, it was the readiness of the advice that rose up in her mouth to stem them. She was only asking, after all, all those things Faith had never quite plucked up the nerve to put to Rosemary. Now she looked across the table to Mara, possessively cradling the teapot, and thought she must find it the same. They teased and they laughed, and by inches Kitty relaxed, the chatter of her teacup growing less nervous as she became interested. It was – odd – Faith thought, stumbling a little over the word, to hear Kitty devoid of her usual inquisitorial style, for once only a girl whose mother had died years ago and not a reporter after a story. And yet, she must have begun somewhere, must once have been more stilted girl than ambitious reporter. It was a dizzying thought, and a dazzling transition to witness. Presently Kitty said, 'And it doesn't – hurt?'

'Kitty,' said Faith, 'Have you _ever_ know us, any of us to send you into harm's way?'

Kitty diverted her attention to her teacup, and Mara batted at Faith's elbow. To Kitty she said, 'Not always.'

Outside a fine snow began to fall, blotting out the last of that days rationed light squibs. Kitty went for matches to take to the lamps, and over the smell of gasoline and the new-blossomed light, said, 'Then it's not only for – I thought the only reason – ' In the end she settled for nodding pink-cheeked at little Christopher, still cuddled against Faith's chest as she shook the last of the matches out. Faith shook her head, inhaled the last of the acrid burnt match smell, and scrabbled for words, not for the first time that day reaching mentally for her mother.

'No,' said Mara for her. 'No, it's not. It needn't be'

'Enter faerie rings and charms and all sorts?' said Kitty, so that Faith laughed and Mara swatted her across the table.

'Something like that,' said Faith. Then, on consideration, 'You know you're always safe here?' She hadn't meant it to be a question. Kitty smiled, shrugged, and gestured to the mess of the soiled dishrag, disintegrating blotting paper, and her unreadable shorthand exercise from earlier. There was a stain growing on the table that Faith strongly suspected no amount of scrubbing would lift. 'You put up with this lot,' Kitty said. ' I was sort of taking that as read.'

'Good,' said Faith, because she needed to say something, someone did. More practically, Mara touched a hand to the teapot, gauging its temperature. The tea, freshly poured out, was a hair;s breadth away from tepid. In the grate, the fire guttered to a final stand-still, which fact prompted Christopher to register his frustration with the universe in a squeal that jeopardised the integrity of Faith's inner ear. In answer, a robin alighted on the windowsill and beat a tattoo with his beak against the frosted glass. Still, it _was_ good, Faith thought. To sit at the spindly-legged table with its imperfect light and defective heating, the three of them some kind of knot poised to confront the cosmos. Kitty's hands were flying as she imparted the news story of the hour, Mara entirely failing to keep up with her. Christopher deigned to quiet, leaving only the robin to hymn the close of the day. Even the ungrounded feeling of earlier had ebbed, leaving Faith unconvinced that there wasn't some charm in play after all. She must have said this aloud, because Mara shook her head, eyes laughing. No, she said, only the ninth sacrament.

Kitty's eyes went wide – 'Aren't there only two?' – and they were back to amicable laughter.

'Of course there are,' said Faith, but then failed to argue as Mara counted them off against her fingers. _Baptism, Eucharist,_ on and on, and at the end of them all, _Tea, and Friendship._ There was nothing for it, Faith found, but to nod acquiescence. Less ambivalent theology, this, more wholehearted agreement that probably God was to be found in tea well-made and existed absolutely in the friendships she had forged over the years. He had been there in the Swallowgate days, the give and takeoff the girls as they caught and bolstered and let fall each other as the moment required. There again in Lili, blue-lipped and dying as she entrusted their war and the memory of it to Faith. Here too, she thought, in the chaos of Kitty's imperfect shorthand, smell of ink permeating the room, and the Assam cooling on her tongue, rich in taste and long-in-the-mouth. No doubt Susan would have been horrified by the conjecture, but Susan wasn't there, and anyway, Faith thought, as she gathered the detritus of tea together, it was _true._


	3. Tea for Four

_I did promise you some nice, pre-war vignettes to stem the gap, I think. Here's another for you. Love, as ever, to all of you reading and/or reviewing along with me._

* * *

 _March, 1923_

* * *

Teddy should have realised he was in for a long evening, when Kitty came bounding up to him in the Larkrise hall full of her usual nineteen questions to the dozen. He was straight off the back of an arrest, so of course she had got to hear of it. _How_ exactly, when they'd only taken the knobby-kneed youth in question in late this afternoon was beyond Teddy, but neither was he inclined to ask. Questions were Kitty's territory, and anyway, he wasn't altogether sure he wanted an answer to the conundrum that was her sixth sense for news.

'You promised me an interview,' she was saying now, eagerness cutting through the tempting smell of tea brewed to exactly the right strength, all malt and musk, and some spice that probably Mara had a name for but Teddy hadn't. Biscuits too, he thought. Freshly baked ones, at that.

'Did I?' said Teddy now, dazedly as Kitty installed him in the wingback chair that the Inspector more usually claimed.

'Yes,' said Kitty. She sat down cross-legged at his feet, effectively barricading him, and recommenced his inquiry.

'What tipped you off that it was Mick Harris? Is it true he has a record for assaulting an officer? What about his brother? Did the police ever suspect him?'

'Kitty,' said Teddy, 'You know all this. Why on earth are you – '

He never did get to the end of it. In a trice she was on her feet, round the corner and taking the stairs three at a time, muttering darkly as she went. Teddy blinked confusedly at the wallpaper with its mingled strawberries and thrushes and shook his head. 'What,' he demanded of it, 'was all that about?'

No answer being forthcoming from the wallpaper, he got to his feet and made to follow Kitty up the stairs.

'I wouldn't, if I were you,' said Faith from behind him, making Teddy jump. Not that it should have, he thought; that accounted for the tea. He was becoming sloppy. No wonder the Inspector hadn't recommended him for the Detective's exam this go-round. Anyone with half a brain should have detected Faith there at the table. After all, it wasn't as if Kitty could brew tea that _was_ tea. Though if it came to that…he turned to the spindly-legged table, and sure enough, there was Mara, and Di with her, because Faith had about as much gift for tea that wasn't stewed as the average cat had for modesty.

'I suppose,' he said resignedly, 'that made sense to you?'

Mara went for another teacup – further proof Faith hadn't had the brewing of it – and the others nodded. Faith motioned him to a place at the table, and he sat down uncertainly, awkward suddenly in this sphere of well-brewed tea and Morris stamp china, with its little unwritten codes between women. Stupid, of course, because he knew them all well, and they him.

'Enlighten me?' he said, accepting the cup and saucer.

Faith hummed. She said, 'It's still very much your world, Teddy.'

'How d'you mean?' asked Teddy. Somebody - Mara? - offered him the plate of biscuits. He declined. Vaguely he was aware that Di had seized his teacup and was pouring out. He accepted his cup back from her and looked to the contents for clarity. They were milky, opaque, and smelled of what Teddy was beginning to suspect was cloves.

'You used her name,' said Faith, as if this were obvious.

'It's only what I always do,' said Teddy. 'The Doc too.'

'Yes, well,' said Faith mildly, 'how often are you Teddy to anyone in the station house?'

'I'm not,' said Teddy. He swallowed a mouthful of tea too hastily and it scalded and bubbled against the lining of his throat uncomfortably. 'And I really don't see,' this probably needlessly, 'what that has to do with anything.'

Teddy spared another glance for the tea and considered, something tugging at the edges of his conscience. He took another breath of milky tea. It was definitely cloves underneath the pekoe, he decided.

'You don't use their names either, I suppose,' said Faith.

'No,' said Teddy, 'not at work anyway,' and whatever it was that had been pricking at the edges of his mind settled into place.

'Right,' he said. 'And Kitty's working. I never thought. I mean, she never seems to stop – does it matter so very much?'

He thought, in the silence that followed, that it probably did. He picked up, but did not eat, one of the biscuits, turning it again and again between his fingers. Shortbread; Mara's grade, all crumbs and rice flour. Faith said sympathetically, 'It wouldn't to you. I mean, you're Sergeant Lovall, world without end, whatever they call you. Not that you have to remind them. Kitty isn't.'

'All those endless cups of tea,' said Di in agreement. 'It's all we can do to get work that _is_ work done. As if the men have never had to boil a kettle before.'

'The hospital's the same,' said Faith, nodding. 'If they could find a way to extricate me they'd seize on it.'

'But,' said Teddy, spitting out a mouthful of tea in his haste to contradiction, 'but you're bloody good at what you do.' Then sheepishly, 'Sorry. I only mean everyone knows there's no one better at – '

'Not the point,' said Faith. 'Though you're not wrong. That doesn't mean the men have to _like_ it, though. On the contrary. If they could get shot of me, they would.'

'Right,' said Teddy, feeling the word deeply inadequate. The shortbread was long reduced to so many crumbs on his saucer. He let Mara take his teacup from him and refill it, unsure when she'd commandeered the teapot.

Teddy said, trying to puzzle this new information out and feeling woefully short of the task, 'But then...the Inspector is always going to you for advice - and the Doc, too.'

Faith hummed. Thoughtfully she said, 'Do you know, Teddy, you must be surrounded by every exception to the rule there is?'

Teddy blinked at her, and Faith shook her head. Di smiled. Faith said, generously, 'Every rule has an exception, or two. Goerdie and Jem happen to be ours.'

Unable to think of anything intelligent to argue, Teddy accepted his teacup back. He braced himself for another swallow of tea, half expecting some further contribution from Mara. Nothing being forthcoming, he turned to her and said, 'I suppose it's the same with you?'

'Oh, nothing like that,' said Mara lightly. Exactly why this should make Teddy's skin prickle was a question he directed mentally towards this second cup of tea. It was still milky, still opaque. Still mired in the residue of the shortbread. Apparently the uneasiness was catching though, because he looked up in time to intercept the tail end of a conversation passing silently between Di and Faith from across the table.

'We took to walking home in twos,' said Mara to no one in particular. 'The Evensong girls. Even then, you get a crick in your neck, walking and looking over your shoulder. It was easier in the end to ask Shirley to wait for me. More security in it, I suppose I mean.'

Teddy looked at her and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Di, who had gone an awful colour said, 'Did we know about this?'

'I didn't, if you did,' said Faith.

Mara smiled. She said, 'I wasn't much after explaining to Jem why the pair of you were being tried for murder.'

'You know,' said Di, with a smile of her own, 'the logic there isn't altogether faulty.'

Teddy nursed his cooling tea and wondered queasily how they could laugh about it. He was suddenly glad he had neglected to touch the shortbread laid out on the table, all rich and buttery. His stomach was curling in painful leaden knots. Years of knowing them, and he had never once thought – had never looked at them as anything other than – what? Adoptive family? Friends? The Doc's people? No, they were more than that last. If they were the Doc's people they had got to be his too, somewhere along the line. Faith, and Mara, Judith, and the assorted gremlins. Di and Kitty too, he thought grudgingly, for all he had never hankered after a sister. Perhaps, after all, and in spite of the Inspector's jokes, he hadn't only stumbled into the force after all.

'Right,' he said, clumsily, because the word was still inadequate, and because he couldn't sit there with them mutely any longer. 'I suppose I ought to apologize. Or something.' He gestured indeterminately at the ceiling.

So saying he got to his feet, threaded his way through the furniture and mounted the stairs. Gingerly, he knocked on Kitty's door. If she was disinclined to answer it, he'd leave her alone. But no, that was cowardly. He knocked again, surer this time. A long pause, and then a scrape of furniture, followed by Kitty's wary face at the door, Tuesday the dachshund folded under one arm.

'Oh,' she said, seeing him, 'it's you.'

'Look,' said Teddy, still clumsily, 'I'm sorry. If you'll let me, Miss Foster, I believe I owe you an interview.'

He stuck a hand out, but Kitty didn't take it. One hand disappeared into her jacket pocket, whence appeared a notepad, while the other extracted a pen from behind her ear. Tuesday, indignant, slithered from her arms in a manoeuvre calculated to injure his long spine. Somehow Teddy succeeded at not laughing. 'All right,' she said, pen poised, 'now, about Mick Harris…'


	4. Wiegenlied

_With thanks to all of you reading and/or reviewing. I'm enjoying the chance t write lighter, shorter pieces for a spell._

* * *

January, 1924

* * *

When the telephone rang, Jem was walking the floor with Helen. Faith had fed her half an hour prior, so that wasn't the problem. Jem had padded the gas out of her afterwards, so it wasn't that, either. And he knew she was dry, because he'd checked. Several times. But she was fussing, and Faith had a long day looming, so Jem was walking the floor with her, and trying not to wake Christopher, when the telephone rang.

Jem glanced at the clock, but of course it was too dark to read it, which meant it was Late. Also, the telephone had succeeded where so far Helen had failed, because now a slipper-shod Christopher materialised before him, scrubbing at his eyes with two balled fists. The phone rang again, and Jem made a dive for it with a free hand he didn't have, because the last thing this late-night caller needed was Christopher's sleepy salutation. Never mind if it went on much longer Faith would wake up again, and that would undermine the whole point of the operation he was supposed to be heading.

'Gladstone 1-,' said Jem automatically, over a grousing Helen. 'Larkrise – Do you require the doctor or the police?'

'Ah, Jem,' said the familiar voice of Chief Inspector Geordie Carlisle, 'sorry to wake you. You appear to be attempting to avert Armageddon.'

'Something like that,' said Jem. 'You never answered the question, by the way.'

Helen jabbed an exploratory finger at the bridge of Jem's nose. Christopher tugged at his arm.

'I talk Un'ca Geordie?' he now demanded groggily. Jem attempted to shrug in the direction of the stairs, whence Christopher had materialised from. That he failed monumentally was evidenced by Christopher's continued tenure as an appendage to Jem's elbow.

'Sorry,' said Geordie from his side of the line, obviously apologetic. 'Look, I wouldn't bother you but something's come up that needs your attention.'

'Now?' said Jem, with another glance at the clock. He still couldn't read it. Christopher was trying to climb Jem's knees. Helen had moved on from his nose and was scrutinizing his eyelids. This caused his eyes to spasm under her ministrations, but at least she had stopped her girning.

'As I say,' said Geordie, 'it's rather urgent. Teddy rang it in…'

'Did he indeed,' said Jem, largely ignoring the latter half of the other man's sentence. Drat Teddy Lovall. Well, not really. Normally Jem had a great deal of affection for the boy. But then, normally he wasn't trying to preserve his eyes from prying fingers, reroute a recalcitrant gremlin bed-ward, all while trying to sustain a coherent conversation over the telephone.

'There's some question about exact cause,' said Geordie. 'I mean, it _looks_ like it's one for our books, but it might be Reid Albert did it himself, in which case….'

'Whole set of questions about burials crops up,' said Jem around his children, one of which was now leaping like an eel while the other half-fell out of his embrace. 'Right. I see. I'll come as soon as I can.'

'Of course,' said Geordie, and rang off. That at least, took care of the issue of the telephone. It did nothing about the body even now in the police surgery, or Helen's fussiness, or Christopher's midnight perambulations of the house. Well, first things first.

He righted Helen, got Christopher in hand – awkward because Helen was still cuddled against his left side – and made to marshal him upstairs. They had got as far as the third stair when Christopher began to drag his feet.

'Can't,' he said, and went limp on Jem's arm.

'Something wrong?' asked Jem, his heart launching itself into the vicinity of his throat. The little boy _looked_ all right, but there was no telling…

'Not tired,' said Christopher. Oh. Well. If that was all.

'Rotten luck, isn't it,' said Jem, and tried to manoeuvre Christopher further up the stairs. It went badly. Helen's deadweight on his arm meant he was deprived of at least half the weight necessary to leaver a boneless boy upstairs. Of course, he could always wake Faith. He _should_ wake Faith. But the term was resuming in the morning, and she had things to do, a surgery to run, and none of that was going to be helped by ministering to nocturnal gremlins.

' _You_ no sleep,' said Christopher.

'No,' said Jem, shuffling Helen a little to reprieve his arm. 'I'm _supposed_ to be sleeping. But work came up.'

'Me too!' said Christopher, triumphant. Jem considered this. Weighed the merits of arguing the point rationally against a two-year-old's logic. He thought it was probably a lost cause.

'Right,' he said, 'you go find your shoes. I'll just settle Helen and we'll…'

Actually, Jem wasn't sure _what_ they'd do, but taking them with him at least guaranteed Faith got a chance to sleep. It was a mostly solid plan. Except for the part where Helen _wouldn't_ sleep. He tucked her under the covers. He took the covers off. He walked up and down the length of the nursery. He sat with her in the rocker. He made faces. He sang what he could remember of that lullaby of Mums's _I saw three ships come sailing in…_

Then Christopher appeared in the door. 'Un'ca Geordie,' he said. 'He need us?'

Nothing for it, thought Jem grimly, bundling Helen into her sling. It was hardly likely to be the strangest parental decision he made this side of eternity. After all, he had once solved the case of the hour by trying to talk _Christopher_ to sleep. It seemed ages ago.

'Come on,' he said, taking Christopher in hand. 'We're the Three Musketeers tonight. All for one, and one for all!'

'Oneforall!' said Christopher, gleeful, and shot his free hand skyward. From her sling, Helen cooed what Jem took for her seconding of the motion.

It was entirely too far to the station house to walk with Christopher in tow. He had also wasted entirely too much time trying to persuade his children out of this adventure to lose any more to mucking about with details like transportation. Jem hoisted little Christopher up onto his shoulders, coat flannel pajamas and all, and so encumbered, started off on the long walk to the station house.

* * *

It was dark when Jem arrived at the police surgery, a fact which, he reflected, as he set Christopher down on the ground, would have deterred just about any other child in Christendom. Well, he thought ruefully, probably not himself, or a young Faith either, but that was beside the point. Christopher ran gleefully ahead, eschewing tree roots and stones with all the deftness of a two-year-old on a mission. Jem had to navigate around him to turn up the wicks of the lights, and only then wondered if perhaps he had done the right thing bringing Christopher along. The body of Reid Albert was respectfully shrouded in the usual sheet, a faint scent of tobacco radiating from it.

'Hello,' said Jem amicably, beginning his usual circuit of the body. 'Now whatever happened to you?'

'Musk Ear look, too!' said Christopher. He made a game effort to leap to table-height, but it was no good. The table was too high, and he was too short. Briefly Jem toyed with lifting him up, before realising what he was thinking and shaking his head. In any event, his arms were still protesting their long stint as bearer of Christopher to the surgery.

'Not fair, is it, old chap,?' said Jem sympathetically. 'Tell you what, though, there's some bits and pieces I'll need from that cupboard, there – you see the one? Can you fetch them for me?' Christopher nodded and went off at a tear that Jem suspected was supposed to be a solemn procession. To Reid Albert he said, 'Now, let's have a look at you.'

There was a bruise on the collarbone that Jem wanted to let sit for a bit. And his knuckles were grazed; he'd want to know how _that_ had happened. A job for Geordie, that. Or Teddy. Speaking of Teddy…He had appeared in the doorframe, looking rather hesitant, sometime between Christopher's reappearance with scalpel and impedimenta, and the end of Jem's first, cursory examination of the body.

'Doc,' said Teddy, 'you're here.' Then, noticing one or both of the children, 'And you brought gremlins?'

If Jem had to guess, he didn't _think_ Teddy had intended it for a question.

'Tree Musk Ears!' said Christopher by way of elucidation. Teddy, caught unawares, did what Jem took to be the only sensible thing under the circumstances and raised both eyebrows in inquiry.

'Three Musketeers,' said Jem for clarity, gesturing at himself, Christopher and Helen as he did so. 'They're helping me with the autopsy, you see?'

'Yes,' said Teddy. 'Quite. Er…why are they helping, Doc?'

'Not everyone,' said a voice from behind Teddy, 'has your distaste for blood, Sergeant. I take it,' this to Jem with a smile in the voice, 'sleep was elusive?'

'Armageddon got the better of me,' Jem said.

'Tree Musk Ears!' said Christopher again. 'We Tree Musk Ears, Un'ca Geordie!'

'That's – ' began Teddy, but Geordie had got ahead of him.

'Three Musketeers. I heard. Quite right, too. Any luck with our corpse, Jem?'

'Well,' said Jem, who was presently evaluating the contents of Reid Albert's stomach, Christopher leaping at his elbow, 'I don't _think_ the family will have much trouble about the burial. I mean, it doesn't look like – '

'I'll just borrow the gremlins, shall I?' said Teddy, suddenly, intervening. For a moment Jem stood blinking perplexity. Then Teddy gestured to Helen, and it suddenly came home to him that Teddy didn't want words like _suicide_ batted around her infantine ears. Teddy probably had a point. Easily Jem lifted Helen out of her sling and handed her over. Christopher, though, hung back, stubborn. He had stopped leaping. Now he said for emphasis, 'Tree Musk Ears!'

Teddy wavered. Jem waved him and the baby off.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I can mind Christopher. He's keeping me on task, aren't you, little fellow?'

'Tree Musk Ears,' said Christopher solemnly. Geordie, Jem saw, was trying not to laugh. Teddy abated.

'Right,' he said, 'well. Helen and I will just be outside, won't we darling? We'll be Musketeers together. What are your feelings on helping Teddy poke around in the files?'

So saying, he slipped out of the surgery and into the hall.

* * *

The trouble was, Teddy reflected afterwards, that Helen's feelings to files were deeply adverse. Which Teddy understood, right enough, some of those files were plain _dull_ , but it was doing nothing to advance his progress. And the thing that he couldn't get over was that when the Doc had had her, she had seemed to be asleep. Or at least _settled._ Perhaps he should have taken the sling for good measure. Not that Teddy had ever had a problem settling Helen before now. He couldn't even remember her needing to be close to a person's heartbeat, particularly. Not at all like Olly. Now Olly…

Teddy was brought out of this reminiscence of brotherly bonding by a perfunctory wail.

'Hungry, are you?' he asked Helen. More wailing, so he padded towards the kitchen in search of milk. He was sure there must be some in there he could heat up. After all, they weren't due to change the bottle for another couple of days, and there should just be enough…Helen didn't want the milk. Never mind that Teddy had got the stuff out of the milk pantry and heated it to exactly the right temperature, or that it smelled pleasantly sweet and creamy. Teddy had even tested it against his elbow, so it wasn't that it was too hot. But Helen wasn't having it. She wasn't having milk-softened biscuit, either.

Accordingly, Teddy padded back down the hall with her, crooning a bit of a lullaby. No good. Surreptitiously, he checked her napkin, but no, that was dry. So much for that. At this point in the proceedings an overtired Benwick poked his nose round a corner and said, grinning, 'Pull the short straw, did you?'

'Hardly,' said Teddy. 'She's quite an easy baby as a rule, aren't you, Miss Helen?'

Helen mewled, a kittenish disavowal of Teddy's testimony.

'Well,' said Benwick, 'I'll leave you too it,' and bounced off, presumably before Teddy could recruit him to the task. As if Teddy would trust the likes of _Benwick_ with one of the Larkrise gremlins.

'I think I'll have that milk, if you won't,' said Teddy to a still snuffling Helen. It had been a long day, and what he really wanted was tea, if only to keep him awake. Sleep, preferably, but since any chance of that had vanished when the call of Reid Albert's body had come in…Teddy shrugged, diffidently. He'd take what he could get. Besides, he was hardly likely to nod off with Helen whimpering in his ear. Especially not with her little fingers giving it exploratory pokes and prods.

'I know,' said Teddy, walking the hall with her, 'I don't like it much either, tell you the truth.' Noticing her audience, Helen increased the volume of her disgruntlement.

'Yes, quite,' said Teddy. 'But I needed work, didn't ? And the Inspector happened to be short-handed. There was a war on. All very unofficial, but who was there to notice?' Somehow, he managed to shrug around Helen's downy head. She smelled of milk, talc and that indefinable something else so singular to young children, almost sweet. She was also working up to a good sobbing fit, Teddy could see that much. He patted her back, and retraced their steps to the surgery.

'We'll have a wee look in on them, shall we?' he said as he went. 'You can see your Dad still exists. He thinks the world of you, you know. Everybody does.' This testimony did nothing to lessen the grievance of the hour.

They were back in the vicinity of the surgery by then. Teddy knew this because notwithstanding the dark of the hall, he could smell the unmistakable smell of ethanol, blood, and…other things Teddy wasn't thinking all that hard about. How the Doc stood it was anyone's guess. Rather him than Teddy any day, though. At least Helen's tears seemed to be ebbing. Now she was mostly hiccoughing and snuffling her anguish into Teddy's uniform.

'Want me to take her for a spell?' said the Doc, poking his head around the surgery door and proving Helen's unhappiness wasn't as diminished as all that. Teddy was about to object, but Helen was reaching for her father, and before Teddy had time to blink, the Doc had got her back in his sling, and was saying conversationally, 'Your brother and I were just going over the bloodwork. Very interesting. You see, if you look closely…'

The strangest part, to Teddy's way of thinking, was that Helen had _stopped_ her tantrum. In fact, she was jabbering some Helen-strand of nonsense apparently perfectly intelligible to knowing parties. Teddy was not one. He watched the Doc lift her to the microscope and shook his head.

'There!' squealed Christopher, and pointed. He had acquired a chair in the interval Teddy and Helen had been away, and now stood on it, hugging it's back, the better to be level with the table.

'Three cheers for the Musk Ears, eh?' said the Inspector with a grin. Teddy shook his head.

'I tried _everything_ , sir,' said Teddy, at a loss.

'I'm sure you did,' he said evenly. 'I told you before. Not everyone is as squeamish as you are about blood.'

Teddy shook his head. Looked again at the tableau at the surgery table. The Doc was bent now so that Helen could direct her little fingers at the unsuspecting nose of Reid Albert. Now _there_ was a turn the bloke would never have expected. 'Obviously not,' Teddy said.


	5. Fearful Symmetry

_For OzDiva, who wanted a murder solution for poor Reid Albert. Sorry it took me an age or three. This one's a generous tip of the hat to Father Brown, and I'd guess it makes about as much sense on this screen as it did on the televised one. Even so, I've done my best to make it less convoluted. As ever, many thanks to all of you reading and/or reviewing. _

* * *

Jem stared into the eyes of the tiger, and the tiger did its best to stare back. It was a stuffed tiger, reduced everlastingly to stalking the confines of the pedestal mount around which the lobby of the former High Commissioner to China's house now orbited. It made Jem slightly sick to look at, all that power and magnetism reduced to a prize to be gawped at. So much for…how had that poem of Walter's gone? _Nature red in tooth and claw?_ That sounded right.

Christopher, though, was fascinated, which was as well, since Jem figured _one_ of them should be scrutinising the thing, if only to see where – or indeed if – the beast was missing whiskers. A mission which was itself the confluence of a late-night autopsy and thereafter a protracted brush with the Fox Corner _Britannica_. Christopher's involvement was a sort of accidental addenda, since Teddy was trapped with Geordie in the station house's interview room, Constable Benwick doing a lot of dull leg work no one envied him, Faith attempting to run a surgery, and, all the usual people having proven unavailable, Kitty had categorically refused to have a gremlin running amok in her newsroom.

'They don't take me seriously as it is,' she'd said, which was a fair point. Idiotic of _The Chronicle_ , to Jem's mind, but that was a different problem for a time when he wasn't trying to deduce possible murder weapons with his small son.

'Look!' shrieked Christopher now, sounding positively gleeful. He was leaping up and down in credible impression of Dachshund Tuesday, index finger jabbing at the outsized paws of the tiger. From the upward trajectory of the small body, though, Jem had a suspicion the paws were not the thing under scrutiny. He swung Christopher up onto his shoulders for better viewing and said as he circumnavigated the body, 'What do you see, Doc?'

Christopher shrieked again, with laughter this time, and pulling on Jem's nose said decisively, ' _You_ Doc!'

'Right,' said Jem, 'you're the assistant.' This came out slightly more nasal than normal, his nose still being held hostage by Christopher's fingers. They were surprisingly strong for such a small person. Not that Jem was complaining. Up close like this the tiger smelled unpleasantly of chemical preservative, fur, and the metallic underpinnings of death, something not even the best preservation efforts could eclipse. He felt the tang of it against the hard palate of his mouth and grimace.

'See something?' Jem asked again, and Christopher released his father's nose to jab a finger in the direction of the tiger's jaw.

'Look!'

Jem looked. It was certainly impressive enough; one practically felt the power of that great mouth, even now, frozen in its perpetual roar of outrage – or was it hurt? – great teeth on display in challenge to the universe. That had been another poem of Walter's, half-forgotten now, except maybe by Di, or Rilla. Something about a tiger. Jem remembered this because of the peculiar spelling. He ran his memory backwards but could only surface titbits of it. _And what shoulder and what are/ Could twist the sinews of thy heart_ …and later, Jem thought, _What dread grasp/ Dare its deadly terrors clasp_. Well, someone had dared, he thought, looking at the mounted tiger, its blazon of stripes and shattered glory. Specifically the High Commissioner as had been, whose house he was now in.

' _Look!_ ' said Christopher again, more persistently, proving that when it came to the point, he had about as much interest in Walter's old remembered things as Jem had had on hearing them in the flesh – a revelation which twisted his heart a little, because if he hadn't always understood Walter, he _had_ loved him, and missed him, and now…He owed Christopher his attention. Dutifully he squinted in the direction of the outstretched finger. There was probably a lesson here about how pointing was terribly bad manners, but it was overshadowed by the fact that Christopher had, in fact, glommed on to something useful. Leave manners to Judith Carlisle and Aunt Una; so far as Jem was concerned, discovery was far more important.

'Well done you, old chap,' he said, bending closer to the tiger's gaping maw. Experimentally, he ran a finger along the jawline and there, sure enough, was the place where the whiskers had been snapped.

'Won't Uncle Geordie be thrilled,' murmured Jem. He hefted Christopher back onto the ground, and led him towards the door, sparing a nod for whichever of the clutch of servants was even now bustling around the foyer.

* * *

What Chief Inspector Geordie Carlisle was _really_ going to be was perplexed. More so than he had been when Jem had brought the report of Reid Albert's stomach contents to him on the morning after the murder. Jem had sat down opposite the Inspector, arranged assorted sleeping gremlins in his lap, and watched his friend's eyebrows mount ever higher over the peculiar medical condition of Reid Albert, deceased.

'He had _what_ in his stomach?' demanded poor Geordie.

'Baking soda and brandy,' said Jem. 'And it didn't kill him.'

'Well no, obviously not,' said Geordie. He'd scrubbed a hand over sleep-ringed eyes in silent testimony to its being too early by half for logic puzzles. 'Even I realise that sounds more like a tonic. What _did_ do for him?'

'Keep reading,' said Jem. Geordie kept reading.

'He'd ingested _what?!_ '

'Well,' said Jem, because this was the part he wasn't sure of, 'so far as I could tell, ground up bristles. Like on a hairbrush, you know? But sharper, obviously, because I don't _think_ the average hairbrush would lead to a perforated intestine.'

Here Teddy Lovall had arrived with tea, and coats by way of blankets for the sleeping children. He had turned a nasty shade of green, deposited his bounty, and promptly exited the room.

'Sounds unpleasant,' said Geordie for his sergeant.

'It sounds bloody agonising,' said Jem.

Then, because it was going to nag him until he'd done the job thoroughly, there had followed an instructive several hours at Fox Corner scrutinising its resident _Britannica_. By that point Mara had whisked the children off to the spare room bed, apparently as unfazed by now as Judith Carlisle had ever been about people appearing on her doorstep at unlikely hours in the names of furthering a murder investigation. She'd resurfaced some time later with a rich-smelling tea, and Shirley, whose expertise on things animal had been appreciated. Not least because there were more kinds of bristle in heaven and earth than had been thought on by Jem prior to this case. In the end, though, it was Pilgrim, feline god of Fox Corner that had decided the thing.

The sun was coming all rose-fingered through the window, and Jem beginning to feel the effects of a night spent awake, when in came that inky black _lare_ and proceeded to weave his way on and around the _Britannica_. Now he lay on a pertinent paragraph, then he'd stand astride the spine, pausing occasionally to obscure a potentially pertinent illustration. Tuesday never did this. Tuesday, lovely, attention loving Dachshund, only lay at one's feet with great sad eyes like disappointed hearts or forgotten roses and looked up adoringly. Which was probably why Jem, exasperated had swatted at the cat, all feline splendour and manipulation, and had been jabbed by several whiskers for his trouble. Pilgrim stalked off, offended, and Jem had been left nursing an injured wrist, surprised by how sharp the blasted things were.

'All right?' Shirley had asked, laconic as ever, and Jem had said yes, fine, and meant it, if for no better reason than the brush with Pilgrim had given him an idea. So back Jem went to the entry on cats, then tigers, something pricking at the surface of his sleep-addled brain. There, sure enough, it was, under the entry for the Saber-toothed tiger… _Whiskers thought to be an ancient Chinese method of assassination_.

Well, that was all right then. All they had to do was find someone well-versed in obscure, almost certainly forgotten beliefs of Ancient China.

'Like someone who _lived_ there for years?' asked Teddy, thus offering the first helpful suggestion of the Reid Albert murder inquiry. And, in case no one had kept up with him, 'Like the man who was hosting dinner for Reid Albert when he died?'

Which was how, Teddy and Geordie being taken up with interviews, Jem had come face to face with a tiger. And the tiger had _definitely_ done for Reid Albert. It was hard to be sure, of course, but Jem thought that in a roundabout way that the tiger would approve of this last bit of vengeance. Fearful symmetry, and all that, or however the poem had gone.

* * *

Faith was still running a surgery, Kitty still at the paper, and presumably Geordie and Teddy still quizzing the inhabitants of the tiger-laden house. Jem paused on the lawn to give it a parting look. Red brick gave way to white-shuttered windows, their jewelled insets a testament to form over function. There was an elaborate cornice with dentils, and a solid flank of columns upholding the overhanging roof that sheltered the door against weather. For good measure the green slope of the lawn was broken up by a hedge maze of terrifying neatness. Jem looked at it, weighed it in the balance, and could not for the life of him see how one could live in a house like that and sustain emotional proximity to one's fellow inhabitants. True, if he and Faith could land such a fine example of Georgian architecture, they, Teddy, Kitty and the gremlins would have practically a house a piece to live in. And Tuesday would have _acres_ of lawn to go adventuring on. But they would never _see_ each other, and that hardly seemed like a happy way to live. The hedge maze alone would swallow Christopher whole.

Jem didn't linger to find out. He got Christopher in hand and set off to make a report to Geordie. He was not, as it fell out, at the station house. A harried Constable Benwick caught Jem looking, though, and jogging to catch up with Jem, cried out a fractured 'Doc!'

Jem stopped, force of habit, and the boy drew abreast. 'Inspector said…'he began, but he was all out of breath, so Jem held up both hands and grinned at him.

'Hardly life or death, Benwick,' he said, and Benwick nodded gratefully. When he had recovered he said, 'Inspector said to tell you he and the sergeant were up at the house.'

'Thanks,' said Jem, and set off in the direction of the Carlisle house.

'Can't be the big house,' he said to Christopher as they went, 'because we were just there, and we'd have seen the auto. And it won't be _our_ house, unless they want to land themselves in the middle of your mother's surgery hours.'

Christopher burbled his agreement with this assessment, trotting dutifully at Jem's side. At the Carlisle house they let themselves in via the kitchen, where they found Geordie, Teddy and Judith in animated discussion around the oblong dining table.

'Jem!' said Geordie, seeing them, 'and Christopher – our budding police surgeon. It _was_ the tiger, I take it?'

'Tiger!' said Christopher brightly, even as Jem corroborated this. 'Definitely the tiger,' he said. He folded himself into a chair and accepted a teacup from Judith, 'Catch me up on the rest of it, why don't you?'

'Right,' said Geordie. 'It's like this. Our corpse was due to take over his host's position at the Consulate several months from now. Benwick found the paperwork to prove it.'

'Which is why,' said Teddy, 'he was up at the house for dinner. Sort of a changing-of-the-guard thing. By all accounts our Commissioner took it with the same kind of honour you use to lose at Cricket.'

'Generous of him,' said Jem. 'His account, or the others?'

'Everyone,' said Geordie. 'And a funny thing for you; everyone seems to have quite liked Reid Albert.'

Jem made this only the latest peculiar thing in a long list of peculiar things, but forbore to comment.

'Mind you,' said Geordie, 'as motives go, being retired out of a job you enjoy and then asked to bring the new man up to par – well, we've had weaker stuff to work with before now. And, of course, there's a chance he'd heard about your powdered tiger.'

'Whiskers,' said Jem. 'Ground up whiskers. The tiger is otherwise very much intact.' Well, if you discounted the minor detail of it being dead. Jem shivered, then suffered Teddy to pass him a fresh cup of tea. It was still hot and felt like liquid sunlight against Jem's throat. After the brush with stunted majesty, it felt sorely needed. Jem sipped at it and felt little pockets of tension unknot. Dimly he was aware of Christopher scampering off to join the Carlisle girls at their dollhouse.

Geordie said, 'Mind you, the daughter _is_ Chinese, so there's a chance she knows her ancient ancestral habits.'

'Or she told her father,' said Judith.

'Go back a bit,' said Jem. 'I'd missed the part where the Commissioner married abroad.'

'Oh, he didn't,' said Teddy. 'No, they, er…brought the girl home with them. Adopted her when she must have been eight or so, by the brother's reckoning. He adores her.'

Jem opened his mouth to query the extent to which she was, then, in fact, family, but thought of Kitty with her propensity for Dachshund worship and shorthand, and Teddy, opposite him, devotee of all things Gremlin, and abruptly changed his mind.

'She was seated in the wrong place for murder,' said Judith, thoroughly losing Jem. The others too, from the looks that went round the table.

Geordie said affably, 'Jem, see if you can make sense of Judith's pet theory.'

'It's really not all that complicated,' said Judith. 'The seating is odd.'

'Tell me,' said Jem, interested. And to the tumble of gremlins by the dollhouse, 'Rachel, Tibby, would you mind terribly much if I…'

Up Rachel sprang like a jack-in-the-box, tugging a reluctant Tibby in her wake. Christopher, naturally enough, trailed them like the caboose of an askew train.

'Course not!' she said with a kiss for Jem's cheek. 'Only, we want to watch.'

'You want to…'Teddy fumbled, blindly, missing not only the rest of his sentence but the milk jug he had been reaching for. Judith passed it to him. Said Rachel, 'We want to watch Uncle Jem solve the murder.'

She sounded like she was commenting on the weather. Somehow, they did not laugh. Jem sat down cross-legged in front of the dollhouse, and Judith drew her chair towards it the better to direct him.

'Right,' said Jem, 'who's where?'

The High Comissioner as had been was at the head of his table. This made sense. Opposite him was his wife, and he'd had a child either side of him.

'And Reid Albert?'

'Next to the son,' said Judith. Duly, Jem stuck the Reid Albert Doll in its designated place, then blinked.

'Really?'

'You see,' said Judith, 'I told you it was odd.'

'It's…Faith would never set a table like that,' said Jem. Refraining from adding that this was true inasmuch as Faith ever gave a thought to seating arrangements. Even so, he knew to a certainty Mara wouldn't have done it that way, and clearly Judith wouldn't, which seemed good enough to be getting on with. He said, 'It's all off-balance. Were they _supposed_ to be arranged like that?'

'Never thought to ask,' said Geordie, sheepish.

'And there wasn't, say, anyone who didn't turn up?'

'I've been asking that for this last half hour,' said Judith. 'They say not.'

'You know,' said Teddy, 'they might not have been able to make up numbers.'

Judith said, exasperated, 'If _I_ can make up table numbers at no notice, the High Commissioner's wife can do it better.'

'At the very least,' said Jem, with a meditative look at the dolls, 'you'd set it up so the spare gentleman was in between the women, wouldn't you?'

'Yes,' said Geordie, 'but I really don't see why…'

'It's off-balance like this,' said Judith, saving Jem the effort of trying to explain seating politics he only half understood in any case. All he really knew was that neither Faith, nor Mara, nor, indeed, any of the women of his acquaintance would have laid out the table as Judith had described it.

'You have a theory,' said Geordie, and this wasn't a question.

'It's like this,' said Jem. 'Reid Albert is _supposed_ to be stuck next to the daughter. Maybe because the mother wants to see about settling her for life, maybe she just wants the table to balance. I don't know. But somewhere between the parlour, or wherever, and the dining room, the borther intervenes. They get talking and he persuades the unsuspecting Albert to sit next to him.' Here Jem tapped the pertinent place in the dolls' table arrangement. Our Reid Albert is getting on famously with him, so doesn't give it a thought, just falls in next to him and they keep talking. Works out quite nicely, too, because then the food is served, someone says grace, and as all the eyes around the room close, out shoots our murderer's hand and slips the crushed whiskers into Reid Albert's meal. Easy as anything.'

'Except, well, you hope a person would notice anyone reaching, wouldn't you, Doc?' asked Teddy.

'Not if you were sat next to them, you wouldn't,' said Judith. 'So, the sticking point is really that your Reid Albert was so well-liked.'

There was a cough from the vicinity of the kitchen door. The gremlins squealed, and the adults heads turned sharply.

'About that,' said Benwick. He was brandishing a file. 'Thought you'd want to know in person, sir. Came up when I was running a background check on our body, just to be thorough, you know. Because, well…'

'The point, Benwick, if you will,' said Geordie, not ungently. Even so, Benwick gave a credible impression of a heat-stunned tomato and stammered, 'Well it's only…Reid Albert, sir. _He_ filed the stuff that forced the Commissioner to retire.'

'Really?' said several people at once.

'Then it wasn't to do with the seats, after all?' asked Teddy.

'Well no,' said Benwick, 'that's just it. I think the Doc and Mrs Carlisle have that right. See, the Commissioner really didn't mind. He was planning to retire anyway. But his _wife_ …see, I got talking with the daughter, once I found the note. Thought it mightn't hurt to check up on all that stuff about honour and whatnot. She said it was the real thing – it was her _mother_ that hadn't wanted to come back.'

'Ah,' said Judith. She reached over Jem's shoulder and tapped the miniature representation of the High Commissioner's wife. She was sat the other side of Reid Albert as was. 'I suppose she could hardly strongarm him to his original place, especially when she could murder him as easily from one side of the table as the other.'

'Quite,' said Geordie. 'Forgive me my sweet, you were, as ever, right. The places _did_ matter.'

'And y'see,' went on Benwick, unable, now he had started, to stop, 'she was closer than anyone to the girl. Always wanted a daughter, you know. So naturally…'

'It came up about the murdering techniques of her ancestors?' asked Teddy, wryly.

'Well, yes,' said Benwick.

They all laughed; impossible not to. After all, how often had they unwittingly corralled their gremlins into investigations? Only this morning Jem and his son had stood eye-to-eye with a tiger, nothing unnatural about it. No, he could see fine how the question of murder methods might arise between parent and child. What he hadn't realised was that he was going to have to build in a caveat about never _acting_ on them next time it came up.


	6. What's in a Name?

_You see? I don't_ always _drop off the face of the earth indefinitely. Thanks to all of you reading and/ or reviewing. This one did my head in, so I'll be interested to see how it lands._

* * *

It started in the nebulous post-war days, what Jims would now call Anderson House Days. One day he'd come haring up the Ingleside lane, unannounced, and there Kenneth Ford. Heretofore he'd been the kind of tall, dark, elusive person that Jims was pretty sure only existed in books, like Captain Kid or Long John Silver. But suddenly, there he was on the Ingleside veranda, elbows propped against the railing and laughing at something Rilla - she was still Rilla then – was saying. Caught off-guard, Jims came up short, half stumbling over his feet in the process. Little eddies of dust scattered around him, and he him sneezed, breaking whatever spell was on the veranda.

'Jims!' said Rilla in exclamatory fashion. Beside her, Kenneth Ford, who was definitely tall, dark and emphatically not elusive, straightened up, touched his fingers to his forehead and said, 'You must be Ingleside's resident soldier.'

'Hardly resident now,' said Rilla. Then, 'We weren't expecting you, darling.' Jims, at a loss for what to do, straightened his own spine and returned the salute. He thought he spoiled it somewhat by scrunching up his eyes in thought as he said, reflectively, 'You'll be the Captain?'

He hadn't meant it to be a question. It came out as one anyway. Rilla was smiling as if she had swallowed the sun. Kenneth Ford, on the verge of metamorphosis, slumped back against the railing and said easily, 'He makes me sound _awfully_ grand for every day, Rilla-my-Rilla, don't you think? We'll have to find someone for you to wear for working days. What have you been telling him?'

Here Jims had blinked confusion and Rilla laughed that wonderful laugh of hers. This time it was Kenneth Ford's name she italicised. Except, of course, she called him Ken. Someone, though, had to answer the question of the hour. Jims, taking it literally, dived nobly into this quagmire of conversation.

'Well,' he said gamely, 'Willa says you went away to win the war for us, but Susan Baker says you once quarrelled with Walter over a kitten and had to be spanked for it, 'cause the kitten nearly _drowned_. Is it _true?_ '

' _Jims!_ ' from Rilla again. Jims promptly ducked his head and scuffed his shoes, defeated by the demoralising combination her exasperation and the resurrection of his lisp. Why, he was _seven_. It was supposed to be gone by now! Mother Elizabeth had spent _hours_ playing games with him to make it stop. Things like a variation on Snakes and Ladders where you only got to roll the dice after first reciting _Revellers Revel by levelling levels_ , or competing to see who could say _Round and round the ragged rocks the rugged rascal ran_. That one was Jim's favourite for the twin reasons of the adventures it conjured and the possibility of even remotely tempting Susan Baker's disapproval. Buoyed by this thought, he plunged on, 'Susan _also_ said that you used to tease Nan, only that _can't_ be true, 'cause she's much too nice to tease. And that – '

' _Jims!_ ' said Rilla again, and he abated. It couldn't be _all_ bad, though, because Kenneth Ford's eyes were twinkling like big, glossy black marbles. Still, Rilla looked sort of funny, like she had when the Red Juniors – at least Jims _thought_ they were called that – had all been at Ingleside, so he stuck a hasty, 'Sorry,' rather sheepishly on as an afterthought.

He knew it was all right when Rilla waved her hand in relaxed fashion and said, 'I'll see what I can rustle up, shall I? I bet you're hungry after that walk, and I think I hear some Monkey Faces calling. They're saying _Jims! Jims!_ ' And off she went, singsonging Jims's name and leaving him to the formidable person of Kenneth Ford.

At least, Jims thought he was very formidable until he left the veranda rail to sit down on the top step, long legs stretched out before him. 'Just between you, me and Susan's calceolarias,' he said in conspiratorial tone, 'It's all true. About the kitten, Nan, the spankings and all that.'

' _Really?'_ said Jims, and crept closer, in spite of himself. Kenneth Ford nodded most solemnly. 'When we weren't quarrelling over kittens, you know, we had some grand larks, Walter and I. Only, he wasn't really the lark sort, so I was always having to persuade him in to scrapes…'

It seemed to Jims that the great Captain Ford deflated, somewhat. Of course, that was very unlikely, under the circumstances, because people who won medals for Canada and got made Captain during the war _didn't_ deflate, an incontrovertible fact known by every seven year old boy with brains. Still, just to be sure, he crept a bit closer. The funny thing was, that in the late afternoon sun, Kenneth Ford didn't really _look_ like a Captain. In fact, he looked entirely ordinary, all things considered. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms, which were peppered with what Susan Baker called 'sun spots' and Rilla called 'freckles' in dismayed tone whenever she found them on her person. His shoes were dusty, as if he too had been scuffing them recently, and he was squinting against the sun. Also, he was grinning, and no one who grinned like that could be all _that_ formal. Jims knew this, because Dr. Blythe, who was a Very Serious Person Indeed, had yet to pull off being serious while grinning. No, Kenneth Ford, Captain, looked not at all like the army captain Jims had pictured.

'Don't feel much like one, either,' said Kenneth Ford, so that Jims, to his horror, realised he had spoken aloud. There was nothing for it but to sink down onto the grass in mortification. But Kenneth Ford didn't appear to notice. No, now he said, as if thinking aloud, 'We'll definitely have to find something else for you to call me.'

'Ken' was rejected on the basis that, as Jims said with all the wisdom of seven, 'You're more than that. Bigger.'

Ken, though, rejected his full name, because, as _he_ said, 'That doesn't sound like me. Can't remember the last time anyone used it.'

Retrospectively Jims suspected him of meaning that no one outside the army had used it, but he'd been too young to appreciate such nuance, then, and besides, it was all so much of a muchness. Because suddenly he'd snapped his fingers and said, 'I've got it!' with a triumphal glee not even seven-year-old Jims could match. 'What about Cap? That's nice and relaxed, isn't it, Soldier?'

By the time Rilla had reappeared with the Monkey Faces the mischief was done and the moniker had stuck. It took various permutations over the years depending on who was around. At Crescent School, for instance, they'd indulge in what Aunt Persis called 'performance parenting' as Ken became _Dad_ of necessity, and Jims _Jims_ , the words sitting clumsily and awkward in their mouths. It wasn't that it was insincere, exactly, Jims thought now, only that there was always, impossibly the very-much-alive ghost of James Anderson still between them, who had tried so hard in those Anderson House days to be father to Jims and not quite landed the performance. And, of course, Jims could never remember when he had last – if ever – been Jims to Cap. He thought he probably hadn't. Of course, he hadn't stayed _Soldier_ either, as Ken promoted him over the years using a complicated system of ranking that would have defeated the best of military minds.

* * *

He's doing the usual round-up for Mandy's girls – Patsy Walker and all that – when he saw it. Saw it, and then wondered how he'd missed the connection before now. After all, he was only doing the kind of mental editing he always did when making up the monthly parcel. This notwithstanding Tom's almost-certainly-valid point about having spoiled the girls long ago on such oddities as Human Torches and the illogical physics of Namor, who really had come an awfully long way since his days as a Funny Pages cartoon. At the counter, the ever-smiling, always-weathered looking Lee mistook the mental editing for reading, and said, conversationally, 'Sort of blows the others out of the water, doesn't it, that one?'

It did, and Jims graciously conceded the point. Decided that the revelation that even superheroes, even ones practically dressed up in the flag, baulked, as it turned out, at being dubbed _Captain_ in full had shot right over his head because, well, it wasn't their shared language, was it, his and Cap's? Comics where what he spoke with Mandy's girls, had been ever since the days of the unremarkable _Daring Mystery_ and _Mystic Comics_. Compound that with the fact that Jims had never yet done this particular run while Cap was languishing in hospital – 'Bored but recovering', as per the trunk call Mum had placed – and really, there was no reason Jims should have seen it. Or so he reasoned. He picked up the usual duplicate copies of everything, in the interest of sparing Mandy the chronically vexed question of First Reading Rights, which he knew to be a war of its own, and then picked up a third for good measure.

'Corrupting another niece, are you?' asked Lee, ever cordial. In the Bridge St dimestore, Mandy's girls were always Jims's nieces, because years of aunts with expertise in Matrilineal Kinship Tables notwithstanding, he never had worked out what the technical name was for one's relationship to the children of one's cousin-by-adoption.

'Something like that,' Jims said.

He'd take the lot across en route to the Toronto Hospital. Drop in on Mandy and the girls at Crow Lake, make sure no one drew blood over his bounty, take enough mental notes to write Mick a decent letter about how they're getting on. He still slipped a note in with the parcel for Cap. After all, it hardly took up space in his case, and it was not as if, for all their private shorthand, they're what the average person would call demonstrative. And besides, Jims thought the note said it best. _We came up with it first – Lt. Jims_


	7. My Latest Grievance

_Hello again! With apologies to the Miss Watsons of the world for this one. I plucked the name from Miss Read, but that's about where the similarity ends. Thanks, as ever, for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

September, 1928

* * *

It was a point of quiet pride to Helen Blythe that she took the fastest and most competent notes of anyone in the Infants' Class. She had not been at the Kingsport school a day when this revelation pricked at the edges of her young mind, pen nib darting across her page at incalculable rate. A fact that left her completely unprepared for the ambush of Miss Watson as she peered over Helen's shoulder, scrutinizing her exercise book.

'Helen,' she said in tones of deep consternation, ' _what_ is _that_?'

'My notes, Miss,' said Helen, and meant it. Further surprise when a red-taloned finger appeared over her shoulder to tap the page.

'What,' tapping Helen's notes as if for clarity, 'is _that_? What are you doing?'

'Copying the lesson, Miss,' said Helen, because she was. She wondered a bit that Miss Watson couldn't tell. Though it was starting to uneasily occur to Helen that even Mama was occasionally defeated by Kitty's notes, when she found them lying around the table. Still, Helen really had done her best to be neat about it. It was _hard_ , though. Her hands were so very small – tiny was Uncle Geordie's word – and there was such a _lot_ of _Annabelle Lee._ It was _hard_ , writing it neatly and quickly. She was brought back to attentiveness by a sharp, 'Don't be clever!'

' _I'm not_ ,' said Helen, and ducked her head as the unbidden heat of tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes. She was not, Helen told herself, resolutely, going to cry. She had hardly been here hours, and the poor, maligned exercise book still smelled all new and crisp. Why, the bell hadn't even gone to signal dinner-time! The unfairness of it was immeasurable. It seemed minutes ago that she had left Larkrise, satchel in hand, new shoes pinching gingerly at her feet, puffed up with the thrill of joining Christopher at school and the smartness of her new red and white spotted dress. It was a special gift from Aunt Judith because Mama hated sewing dresses, and anyway, wasn't very good at making them up, a fact that still confounded Helen's keen mind. She had felt ever so much bigger than baby Sophy, who couldn't even say whole words yet. Queen of the world even. Well, second to Rachel and Tibby Carlisle, because they were Terribly Grown Up, but still. A queen in her own right. Certainly of the Larkrise fifedome. And now Miss Watson was jabbing at the pristine newness of her exercise book, accusing her of a transgression she hadn't committed.

'Well,' said that revered woman now, 'it doesn't _look_ like note-taking. Does anyone else think Helen is taking notes?'

In a flash she had got the much-abused exercise book by the spine and was displaying it to the class. The injustice of this was too great. Helen sent a prayer skyward that God in his mercy would let the floor swallow her up, or at the very least turn her invisible. Both might be preferable.

Instead of which, there came cautious chorus of _No, Miss,_ from all corners of the room, and one muffled groan that Helen took for Christopher. Really, this was too, _too_ much! It was the height of disloyalty, when even _Christopher_ wouldn't take her side. He was meant to be her armoured knight. Not that Helen had wanted one much, when Dad and Teddy had charged him with keeping an eye on her, but that was before Miss Watson and the Exercise Book. The tears had developed a mind of their own and were even now overspilling her eyelids, leaving hot, prickly maps of their betrayal along her cheeks. Helen was sure she had never been so humiliated. Never, in all her five years of existence. Probably she would never know dishonour like this again.

A scrawny limb pierced the air, and perhaps it wasn't the end of the world after all, because there was Christopher's plucky treble, 'Please, Miss…'

'You disagree, Mr Blythe?' said Miss Watson, eyes narrowing. It was all over now; Helen saw that. Her brother was many things, but he wouldn't cross a teacher. Painfully, Helen stifled a hiccough.

'It's…no, well it's shorthand, Miss. Like what Kitty does, at home. When she writes.'

'Do you mean,' in tones of severity, ' _That is how Kitty writes_?'

'Yes Miss,' said Christopher, and bobbed his head.

'Then say so,' said Miss Watson. Christopher bobbed his head again, in apology this time, but it didn't register. Already Miss Watson had moved on. Now she was demanding of Christopher, 'Who, pray tell, is Kitty?'

So died the glimmer of hope that had been blossoming in Helen's chest. Christopher would surely retreat now, of tactical necessity. But Christopher was stalwart. He looked evenly across the room at the formidable Miss Watson and said without the least hesitation, 'She's our sister, Miss.'

At the far end of the room, two darkly elegant eyebrows shot upwards. 'I don't recall you having a sister, Mr Blythe. Have I taught her?'

'No,' said Christopher stoically, so that this, Helen reflected, is where anyone else would have just said Kitty grew up during the war at another school. But Christopher was nothing if not painfully precise. So, of course, he pressed on, 'No, that is, you wouldn't have done. I mean Kitty isn't…'

'You're not telling stories, are you?' said Miss Watson. Christopher blanched.

Helen said, from the exposed vantage point of her front row desk, 'No! Kitty is – Mama says she's our sister of the heart. Not _blood_ you know – '

'In fact, not family, then?' said Miss Watson.

'But she _is!_ ' said Helen, clawing mentally for a way to make this woman understand. 'Kitty _is_. It doesn't _work_ like that. She's ours, and Teddy too – better than anyone could ask for.' This all in one outrush of breath. After which, Helen slunk low in her chair, jumping when the exercise book came down on the front of her desk with a _thwak_.

'That's quite enough of that,' said Miss Watson. 'I think,' with a hawk-eyed look at her disparate charges, 'We'd better send you home for today, Miss Blythe, Mr Blythe.'

'But – ' began Helen, but she caught Christopher's eye, and abated.

'There isn't anyone at home, Miss,' he said. 'Mama will have the surgery and Dad's on a case, so you see…'

'Then you will have to find your mother, and explain, won't you?' said Miss Watson.

There was no arguing. Anyway, Helen couldn't have born it any more. Her little soul was already peppered through with a host of grievances. That on top of these she must go before the parental court and explain the ignominy of being sent home her _first day_ at school, and for copying out her lesson, was really too much. She got as far as the courtyard before beginning to cry in earnest. Christopher got a spindly arm around her and hugged her, awkward because of his satchel at his side, and the strap of hers, and the fact that they didn't dare stop in case anyone look out the window and wonder what they were doing, two children out of class.

'Never mind,' he said, and looped a careless hand through hers, the better to propel Helen along. 'I don't suppose it matters. Though,' and this with curiosity, 'what made you write it out like that, anyway? I mean, you _know_ your letters.'

'I thought it's what people did!' said Helen.

'Oh,' said Christopher. It was Helen's turn to be curious. She sat down on the pavement, and inquired with a tilt of her head, 'Do they not?'

'Just Kitty,' said Christopher. 'At least,' as he sat down beside her, 'I _think_ it's just Kitty. You must have noticed Gran and people don't write that way in their letters.'

'But that's _letters_ ,' said Helen. 'That's _different._ I was taking _notes_ , so I thought…'She shrugged, helpless. She scuffed one new shoe in the dust and little clouds rose up around them, lightly spattering their socks as it settled. There was really nothing else to say. Her nose began to run. But at least the horrible, mortifying crying had stopped. Christopher fished in his sleeve and came up with a handkerchief. Helen took it appreciatively.

There was nothing to do about the headache she had developed behind her eyes, or the fact that she wanted to crawl under the swirling eddy of autumnal leaves and never resurface. But even the leaves were disloyal,skidding around them, tickling Helen through the light cotton of her ankle-socks. Hard to believe the world could be so cavalierly beautiful on a day wrought with grievous iniquity. She rested a golden head on Christopher's bony shoulder and breathed in the new-clothes smell of him, of the soap he'd used in last night's bath, and the sharpness of the air.

'Will Mama be _very_ angry, do you think?'

Christopher snorted. Helen thought it his best impression of St. George's dragon to date. 'I should say so,' he said, and Helen's soul slithered into her shoes. She must have looked it, because he hastened onward, 'With the teacher, not you.' He gave her a squeeze for good measure, and Helen allowed herself to breathe again.

'Oh,' said Helen. 'Well. That's all right. Are you sure?'

'Definitely,' Christopher said, and proceeded to help her to her feet.

* * *

As expected, their mother was in the throes of a surgery, when they arrived unexpectedly on the hospital doorstep. A nurse Helen thought she knew, but whose name eluded her in her distress, settled them in uncomfortable wooden chairs outside the office door and promised to fetch them in at the first opportunity. They sat, legs swinging in the too-high chairs, with their knobbed backs that forced good posture, counting the seconds as proclaimed by the too-large clock overhead. When Helen could bear it no more, she twisted round to face Christopher, hands upraised. To her immeasurable relief, he understood at once, so that there was one less thing to explain and explain. There was only the two of them, hands dancing back and forth to the imprecise rhythm, _My mo-ther told me, if I was good-ey_ …It left Helen's palms stinging slightly, and the lyrics were less than ideal. Helen paled again. She must have, how else to explain the way Christopher gave her hands a needless press and one of his patented wry smiles?

'Why don't we play _I had Scarlet Fever_ , instead?' he said.

In the end, Christopher proved to have the right of it. Mama, if less than pleased at finding both children on her surgery doorstep, took one look at them and said, 'That must be a record. I make that hours into the start of the school term.'

'It wasn't Helen's fault,' said Christopher at once, and Mama, at least, had the grace to hear the case out before passing sentence. Helen watched as her eyebrows drew together, then squirmed under the ever-narrowing caramel gaze. Would _no one_ understand? Was she going to end up in one of the awful places Dad made people go for all eternity, never to take any notes ever again? But then Mama said, 'All this over _shorthand?_ ' and Helen wanted to laugh and cry and jump up and down in her relief. She settled for running hard at Mama and hugging her fiercely. They overbalanced, and collapsed on the slippery linoleum floor, bright-eyed and laughing giddily. Christopher rolled his eyes and said, 'I _told_ you so,' with that particular cadence distinct to older brothers.

'I didn't know only Kitty was allowed to write it,' said Helen, which, inexplicably, occasioned fresh spasms of laughter from Mama. 'I thought _everyone_ took their notes that way. It's _faster!_ ' Further helpless cascades of laughter from her mother, who was still ensconced on the floor, Helen perched precariously on her knees. 'It _is_ ,' Helen insisted, still unsure of the joke. 'Mama, it _is_.'

'Of course it is, darling,' said Mama, beginning to clamber upright, and pulling Helen with her. Helen's nose wrinkled in perplexity. 'Then what,' she demanded, 'is so funny?'

'Nothing, lamby,' said Mama, and pulled her close, engulfing Helen in smells of carbolic and camphor. 'Nothing at all.'

* * *

For something decidedly unfunny, even harrowing, the whole episode caused a cacophony of conversation around the spindly-legged table when, finally, Helen and Christopher were let go from a day spent playing Assistant to Mama at the surgery. There had been bandages to fetch and sutures to thread, and it was all infinitely more exciting, Helen thought contemptuously, than anything the awful Miss Watson had set them that morning. _Anyone_ might read _Annabelle Lee_ if so minded. _She_ had helped Mama do vital work helping people.

'What I can't get,' said Teddy, squinting at Helen's infantine shorthand and the much-maligned exercise book, 'is how you learned to _write_ all this, little lamb.'

Helen, worming her way up onto Teddy's lap, said, as if it were obvious, because, really, it was once you thought about it, 'I watched Kitty.'

'You…' Opposite Teddy, Kitty's eyes widened so that they rivalled the grimmest and biggest of the dogs in Anderson's _The Tinderbox._ 'You got all that,' jabbing pointedly with her index finger, 'by _watching me_?'

Helen nodded. Really, the _fuss_ everyone was making of it! As if she and Christopher hadn't spent _hours_ craning their necks for a _glimpse_ of Kitty's writing, with its fascinating symbols and scrawls. Once, on a rare, lazy afternoon that had been just the two of them, Kitty and Helen, Helen had made Kitty explain it. Not another language, after all, just a speeded-up version of this one with a couple of flourishes and baubles to say _and_ or _there_ when in a hurry.

'Have you any idea,' Kitty's tone was incredulous, 'how many hours it took me to get anywhere _near_ good at that, lambkin?'

Helen, who had never asked, shook her head. 'Guess she had an awful good teacher, eh, Kitten?' said Teddy, and inexplicably, that reduced Kitty to helpless peals of laughter. She buried her head in her arms and laughed until tears streamed down her face. 'You've seen my shorthand, Teddy,' she said, voice muffled. 'And it isn't anywhere near deserving of that kind of a compliment, thanks all the same.' Then Kitty looked up, caught Helen's eye and said, 'It will be an absolute _sin_ , lamby, if we don't make a journalist of you, have you got that? A sin.'

Helen nodded, but vaguely. Really, she couldn't see what the fuss was about. She'd only been trying to keep up with the teacher and somehow that had got her sent home for her trouble, and now brought her under the amazed scrutiny of her family.

That prompted a recollection of the other half of this morning's incident. Helen said, carefully, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings, 'Teacher said you couldn't be family, you and Teddy, because you weren't really-truly Blythes. Because your names were different and not in Grandad's family bible. Is that right?'

There came a disgruntled 'Oh, for God's sake,' from the fire as Dad registered this inquiry, followed by a squeal from dog Tuesday as he tumbled to the floor, having supposed no one would be cruel enough to stand up once he'd settled to sleep on their knees.

There was a remonstrative ' _Jem_ ,' from Mama, mired in the kitchen, but it didn't sound like she meant it much. On the contrary, when she appeared in the doorframe the flash was back in her eyes that said she was angry, but not at him, or even at Helen for asking.

'Rubbish,' said uncle Shirley staunchly from the wingback chair, from which place he had been beating Dad at chess. 'There isn't, by any chance, another school you can send your gremlins to, Faith? I'm unconvinced by this one.'

'Believe me,' from the kitchen with grim determination, 'I'm seriously investigating the possibility. I'll drive them out to Elie myself, if need be. In the meantime,' joining the quartet at the spindly-legged table, 'I'm writing a Stern Letter to the schoolboard. Even if you _shouldn't_ , strictly speaking, be writing up notes in shorthand.' This last to Helen.

'But,' said Helen, 'it's _faster_!' Kitty grinned at her across the table; Teddy kissed the crown of her head. Everyone else laughed, but not unkindly.

'It _is_ ,' said poor Helen, who had thought she was through explaining this most pertinent of details.

'It is,' agreed Kitty. Helen could have kissed her, but didn't dare wound Teddy by staging the escape necessary to do so.

'Absolutely,' said Dad. 'It's just…well, the thing of it is, lamby, that absolutely no one but Kitty and one or two people at _The Chronicle_ have the foggiest idea how to read it. How many times,' as he swooped down and plucked her out of Teddy's arms, 'have you seen us pass that stuff over to Kitty to make sense of for us?'

Helen hummed against his neck, mostly because this point did her the justice of sounding fair. She _had_ seen them hand off secretarial shorthand to Kitty before, lots in fact. It had always boggled Helen, because plainly Dad and Uncle Geordie knew everything, and what they didn't know, Mama, Uncle Shirley and the aunts _did_. 'So really,' said Dad, reinstalling himself in the lionshead chair and arranging Tuesday and herself so they weren't _completely_ on top of each other, 'I reckon your teacher was mostly cross on account of you being cleverer than her.'

' _Jem!_ ' again from Mama, but no one appeared to be listening, except maybe Uncle Shirley, and he was nodding. He also sported what Gran called The Blythe Smile, which generally meant he agreed with Dad, even if he wasn't saying so. Dad's chest was solid, and smelled reassuringly of peppermint and carbolic rinse. Tuesday was peppering her in wet, velvety kisses. Christopher had undertaken to replace Dad at the chess board, and as it turned out, she and Kitty were the two people in the universe who could write fast and efficiently when called upon. It was popularly agreed that Helen's failure to realise this pertinent detail was not her fault, and all was, in fact, right with the world.


	8. Tea with my Aunts

February, 1923

* * *

There was something terribly wrong with Mum. Jims knew this to be a certainty because Grandfather Gilbert had come all the way from the Island and Ingleside and brought Grandmother Anne with him. It was fine, at first; they came in and shed their coats and sat in the parlour with Jims and Mum and had tea on Mum's Sunday China, which was very elegant and covered in little flowers that Aunt Persis knew the name for but Jims did not. They had even brought him a new model aeroplane to build, so that was all right. The kind that came in a kit, and that Jims could spread across the floor the better to assess the pieces.

He had done this with Grandfather Gilbert, sitting at the kitchen counter, with its crack down the centre, which wasn't ideal because the surface sloped and the crack tended to eat things. Things like crumbs and those little sticky-up bits that held the wings in place on model aeroplanes. On the other hand, it was a _whole afternoon_ with Grandfather Gilbert and it had been ages since Jims had had one of those. Even if Jims was better at the aeroplane assemblage than he was. Funny how that worked; they'd laughed lots over it.

Anyway, that had been fine. They'd built the aeroplane and had more tea, and Grandmother Anne had got in jellied eels _'specially_ for Jims. He knew they were for him because Mum was always fretting what the Rosedale Presbyterian Women would think of them and not buying them. This was confusing, because the Rosedale Presbyterian Women went to church with Mum and as far as Jims could tell, church was supposed to be nice to you, but he'd never pressed the point. Eels were, like model aeroplanes, for special occasions.

But then they had shut Mum up in her room and Jims had been bundled out of the house with Aunt Persis for the day, and that just wasn't right. The last time Jims had been sent away from home, Mother Elizabeth had been Having A Baby, and just look how that had turned out. Well, it had got Jims back to Mum, and he'd _missed_ her, so that part had been all right, but it had also left him without Mother Elizabeth and made his father Terribly Upset, which was less good. Also, there had been a distinct lack of a baby, and Jims remembered that Grandfather Gilbert had been an _awful_ colour for days afterwards. Mum had cried lots, too. All of which led Jims to suppose that unspeakable things were being enacted at the little Maple St House, even now. He tugged on his aunt's hand to convey this, but she didn't seem to understand. She thought he was tired, and hefted him up over her shoulder. From this vantage point Jims could watch teh pavement disappear behind them, his legs dangling awkwardly against her abdomen. Aunt Persis smelled not unpleasantly of honey, ink and old books, and for a moment Jims let himself settle against her shoulder, because maybe this was how she intended to take him home to Maple St. That might be all right. But then minutes passed and it became apparent that they were still walking the wrong direction – by quite a lot, to Jims's mind – so he had to squirm to get out of her arms. He was halfway to plotting an elaborate manoeuvre in which he climbed over Aunt Persis's shoulder and sort of somersaulted onto his feet when she set him down.

They were at the corner of South Drive by then, so Jims rocked back on his feet, spun round and made a dart in the direction of Maple Street. It didn't work, mostly because Aunt Persis turned out to have extra-long arms, sort of like the Long-Armed Wailing Monster that sometimes appeared when Jims was trying to escape his bath or shun his vegetables. Anyway, she caught him by the collar with a laugh and said, 'Not that way, darling.'

The hand holding him hostage somehow transitioned from shirt collar to shoulders and pinioned Jims not unaffectionately to her side. This rendered him, effectively, a prisoner, which seemed incredibly unfair, considering that if Mum was going to die of a baby, too, he should at least be allowed to _see_ it. At the very least he should be allowed to tell her goodbye. Still, it was difficult to escape the arm around his shoulder. There was nothing for it but to lean against Aunt Persis's side, and inhale the honey, ink and books smell of her, along with the occasional piece of cat fur. He could make another bid for freedom when they got to the tram stop, he supposed.

Only they didn't _stop_ at the tram stop, which in Jims's book, was patently unfair. How else was he supposed to escape and get home to Mum to tell her goodbye before the baby killed her, or they both died, or whatever it was that was happening happened? Instead they walked on, and it was an _awfully long_ walk by Jims's reckoning, along Yonge St, not talking much because of the noise of the traffic. They were just past Rosedale station when Jims stopped the first time, twisting under Aunt Persis' arm, and craning his neck the better to see where they were.

'Auto catch your fancy?' asked Aunt Persis, and what with the autos and horses all mixed together, Jims supposed it wasn't an unfair question. It was also easier to agree than explaining that Mum was dying and the world was conspiring to keep him away from her, so he jabbed his finger in the direction of a passing Cadillac.

'Very nice,' said Aunt Persis, approvingly, which surprised Jims, because so far it had yet to occur to him that girls noticed things like autos.

'Better than your Grandfather Gil's, do you think?'

That was such an interesting question that for a moment Jims almost forgot that Mum was dying of the baby and stood on Yonge St considering the question.

'No,' he said finally, loyally. 'I don't think so.'

'Me either,' said Aunt Persis, and they started on walking again. But now she had got Jims noticing the autos, and it seemed important to keep a sort of log of them, because he might be able to convince one of them to take him home. That suited Aunt Persis fine, and thereafter they stopped sporadically to take a tally of passing motors.

This accounted for how they got as far as a tea room on Yorkville Avenue before Jims had fully realised what was happening. After the coldness of the February midmorning, the little shop with its impressively tiled floor and elegantly rounded tables was almost stuffy. Jms was unceremoniously unburdened of his coat and gloves while crouching low, the better to inspect the elaborate coil of the table legs. He thought he might just be able to slip through one of them and thence scamper his way to the door. He'd have to do without his coat, of course, seeing as how Aunt Persis was even now holding it hostage, but…No, that wouldn't work. There were too many tables between Jims and the door. Though he should crawl ever so fast, odds favoured his colliding with one of them, and then Aunt Persis would insist on hustling him to the local doctor's surgery, which was probably where he'd be when, inevitably, Mum died. This was a terrible thought. He sat down hard on the floor. Aunt Persis had the grace to presume he'd only lost his balance.

'All right?' she asked, helping him up again. Gently she was manoeuvring Jims towards the counter with its display of finely coiffed cakes. It wasn't that they were particularly _interesting_ , to Jims mind, but he _had_ walked an awful long way, and he couldn't help being hungry. Perhaps there was a way of escaping with confectionary in hand…He eyed fondant rosebuds and curls of royal icing judiciously, trying to assess what would be most portable. The fruit tartlets were out of the question, because he couldn't possibly run _and_ eat one, and anyway, they'd be a mess of custard and pastry if he tried to eat them without a fork. And then, always supposing Mum _didn't_ die, she'd be cross about having to get the custard off his shirt cuffs. And if she _did_ die, which seemed altogether more likely, then probably no one would ever get the custard out of his shirt cuffs ever again, and he'd be a laughing stock on Maple St. Unless Aunt Persis remembered to do it. Somehow, though, Jims couldn't picture Aunt Persis interacting with a laundry machine. He was under the distinct impression that, being a grown up, she had no need of such things. Which left him still undecided on the vexed question of what, if anything to take on his pilgrimage homeward.

He was just deciding he'd better not risk anything after all and seize this current opening to weave through tables and chairs to the door, when Aunt Persis said something to the woman at the counter about cocoa and gingerbread and proceeded to manoeuvre Jims back to their table.

'Are you sure you're all right?' said Aunt Persis as she helped Jim into his chair. It had the same coiled legs as the table, and if Jims twisted around in it, he could rock it backwards, a detail he filed away for when, inevitably, he made his grand escape. He thought the arrival of the cocoa and gingerbread might be a good window of opportunity. Though it was a shame he was never going to get even a taste of them. But Jims squared his shoulders resolutely. He'd just have to come back, that was all. 'Only,' Aunt Persis was saying, 'you've gone awfully quiet.'

Jims nodded. There was a sugar bowl in the centre of the table. Jims helped himself to it and began systematically reorganising the contents so that they formed a pyramid. This was the part where Aunt Persis was supposed to admonish him for meddling. Jims knew this because it was what other adults did. Susan Baker, for instance, would be horrified. Also Madrun, resident dragon of the Maple St kitchen, who somehow managed to make the singsong lilt of her accent – Welsh, Cap called it – sound positively menacing when she deemed it necessary. Aunt Persis leaned across the table and said, 'I'd put that one there. More stability,' and to prove her point gingerly relocated one of the more precarious sugar cubes. It left little golden crystals behind on her fingers. It was all so unlikely that Jims forgot for a moment to worry about Mum dying of the baby to goggle at his aunt. She offered him a sunburst smile and said, 'I got lucky with that one. Shall I try another?'

Jims nodded without meaning to, and then laughed when the pyramid collapsed on itself.

'Better start again,' said Aunt Persis, offering him a sugar cube. 'Show me where I went wrong. And tell me what the trouble is while you're at it.'

Jims blinked at her perplexedly. There was no _point_ in going in to it, because at the end of the day, he was still going to in a tea room on Yorkville Avenue assembling a sugar cube pyramid and Mum would still be dying of the baby, and it was all much too complicated to go in to with a grown-up.

'I've seen pictures, you know,' said Aunt Persis. She had obviously decided Jims was never going to start on the sugar cube pyramid, because she had taken its reconstruction into her own hands and was laying a foundation. Jims thought it was probably too small for the purpose but didn't realise he'd said so until his aunt said, 'Is it? Where would you add pieces? The pictures never really do them justice, I think.'

So Jims tacked on more sugar cubes and Aunt Persis said, unaccountably, 'They're going to be all right, you know.'

Jims paused midway through the second pyramid tier to blink at her. Blinked again when his own sugar-sticky hand was enfolded in a larger pair. They weren't at all soft, which was always what Jims expected from Aunt Persis in her elegance, but padded and ridged in funny places, from her indexes, he supposed. Whatever an index was. He had a sort of idea they went in books, but the fact that Aunt Persis _wrote_ them left him imagining a sea of sprawling and untamed words that had to be sorted, possibly through a colander, the way Madrun strained greens.

'How d'you know?' asked Jims, forgetting now that he was supposed to be mcgyvering an escape. The woman from the counter had appeared with the cocoa and gingerbread. There were generous portions of cream on both, and someone had frosted the cocoa with cinnamon. It smelled divine. Like warm, liquid sunshine after the cold of their walk.

'Because,' said Aunt Persis, prodding a mug Jimsward, 'you were born under a particularly lucky star. And because your grandfather is the best doctor there is.'

Jims risked a piece of gingerbread and considered this. It was ginger-molasses, and when he dipped it in the cocoa it went soft and chewy in exactly the right places.

'But,' said Jims, because it had to be said, 'but he was there for Mother Elizabeth, too. And…and that still went wrong.' He frowned, as much over the memory as over the disloyalty he felt at making the admission.

'Yes,' said Aunt Persis, 'but she didn't have your mum's luck. Have you never heard the story of Irene Howard and the odd shoes?'

'No,' said Jims. He did not think it was particularly pertinent to the current circumstance, though. Irene Howard could hardly be as fearsome a thing as a baby. That was, a person couldn't _die_ of an Irene Howard, probably.

'I don't know,' said Aunt Persis grimly, which was how Jims realised he'd said thst aloud, too. In spite of himself, Jims relaxed into listening to the story, now and then pausing to munch his gingerbread and sip at the cocoa. It was beautifully rich – much more chocolatey than anything Susan Baker had deigned to give him, _certainly_ richer than any Madrun creation, and it slipped easily down his throat. It really _had_ been a long walk, Jims reasoned, and he'd be no good to Mum if he died of starvation trying to get back to her on his own.

Though he was starting to think he might not have to, after all. Irene Howard sounded quite awful by Aunt Persis's rendition, and if Mum had bested _her_ then she could probably survive the baby. That was probably what Mother Elizabeth's trouble had been; she hadn't got to practice surviving crises on Irene Howard. A smile from Aunt Persis suggested Jims had said this aloud too, and that it had been the right thing to say.

The trouble, of course, was that if it all went wrong anyway – if Mum and the baby died – then it was anyone's guess what would happen to Jims. He actually paused midway through a mouthful of gingerbread, little brain whiling and rattling through all the possible outcomes of this scenario.

He frowned over his cocoa, puzzling it out. He didn't _want_ to be disloyal to Grandfather Gil, but on the other hand, babies did seem to be a terribly dangerous commodity. And, of course, Cap had been worried, and Jims was pretty sure he knew everything Jims didn't know about how the universe worked. He risked a mouthful of chocolate and decided that the most likely outcome was that he would end up all alone, like Oliver Twist, since obviously Cap wouldn't be allowed to keep him. The world didn't work that way; little boys were supposed to have _mothers_. That was why James Anderson had had to reunite Jims and Mum, Jims was certain.

Opposite him, Aunt Persis stuck out her hand to him.

'Look, she said, 'in the unlikely event your grandad _is_ wrong – which I don't think he is – we'd look after you.'

'Really?' said Jims, surprised into giving her hand a squeeze. 'Then I wouldn't go 'way again?'

'No,' said Aunt Persis with great solemnity. She came round the table, and somehow Jims found that notwithstanding his distaste of hugs, he didn't mind when she eased herself into his chair and lifted Jims onto her knee. She still smelled of old books, ink and the St George st cat, and now also of cocoa, but this was all right. Her arms were reassuringly warm around his middle as she said, 'That's what aunts are for. Imagine if we let you go now – who would tell you about kinship tables?'

Jims, who had never really care about kinship tables, except inasmuch as the aunts loved them, nestled into her arms and hummed contentedly. Aunt Persis went on, elaborating a list of things she had to ensure never happened, including but not limited to the preservation of the cleanliness of Jims's ears, expanding his knowledge of autos and the Fordian rite of passage that was surviving at least half a dozen near misses with Toronto traffic. 'Though _don't_ ,' this with emphasis, 'tell Susan Baker about that last one. It will be our secret, shall it?'

Jims agreed, snuggling deeper into the hug. He hadn't counted on having Aunts, hadn't realised they were allowed to intervene in the event that Dire Crisis should take your mother away from you . It was reassuring, useful knowledge to have.

'It wasn't bad,' said Jims, with a sudden, guilty pang for the Anderson homestead, and the musically accented English that had lulled him to sleep for two solid years. 'But it wasn't _home_.'

'I know,' said Aunt Persis. Then she swung Jims onto solid ground, and offering him his coat said, 'Shall we see how they're getting on?'

Jims nodded. Aunt Persis bundled him back into his coat, fussing over the togged buttons, and then it was back through the cold, cheeks pink and ears stinging. It snaked under his gloves in spite of his aunt's best effort's to tuck them into his shirt-cuffs, and nipped at his eyes so that they prickled with tears that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Mum was in Grave Danger.

For a while Jims tried to distract himself by counting the little puffs of breath that wreathed his nose, but gave up when the numbers got into double digits. He still found the order of the after-tens awkward, and anyway, he had more important things to worry about. Like getting home on time to Mum, and making sure she wasn't dead, and the baby too. If there even _was_ a baby. Jims still had doubts. Back past Rosedale, along Crescent, down South Drive, along the Glen Road, onto Elm Ave until it finally, blessedly forked into Maple St. Jims ran the last hundred yards, sleeves flapping forlornly in the February chill, wind whistling past him. On and on until he was clambering up the walk to their own red brick house, barrelling through the door and into the hall, atypically cluttered with the coats, boots and handbags of interloping relatives.

'Jims!' said someone in exclamatory fashion, and then swept him up into a bear hug. Someone turned out to be Grandmother Anne, smelling residually of lavender-water and something darker and more ominous that Jims couldn't place. One of Grandfather Gil's surgery smells, though, Jims knew that much. On the other hand, when he risked a sideways look at her, she was sort of glowing, so it couldn't be all bad. She hadn't glowed when Mother Elizabeth had died of the baby, he remembered that much.

Aunt Persis had caught him up and was now saying apologetic-sounding things to Grandmother Anne, who didn't appear to be listening. She waved in the direction of the stairs and said, 'I was watching for you. There's someone I think you'd like to meet.'


	9. Enter Robin Goodfellow

Singapore, 1925

* * *

Una Meredith opened the door and came face to face with a monkey. She stared at the monkey and the monkey stared back. It was small, matted, tawny in colour and sitting bold as you please in the arms of one Carl Meredith, which went a considerable distance to explaining the oddness of his knock not seconds before. Una blinked. The monkey chattered and clapped its hands – or were they paws, Una wondered – together.

'This,' said Carl, 'is Puck.'

At least, Una thought, taking in the spectacle of brother and monkey, he hadn't said something like _This is a monkey of the species X,Y,Z, partial to A, B, and C._ All perfectly true, Una was sure (albeit much more specific when parsed through the language of Carl) but fundamentally irrelevant. So, the monkey had a name. This meant Carl had bonded to it, and judging from the fact it was now on her doorstep obstructing Carl's face and chattering fit to burst, he was bringing it home. Possibly permanently.

'Puck,' repeated Una, stupidly, because what else was there to possibly say? Then, as an afterthought, 'He's a monkey, Carl.'

Carl nodded, unperturbed. 'One that loves peanuts,' said Carl, and jostling Puck, managed to procure the aforementioned treat from somewhere on his person. Una missed _where_ exactly, being in that moment entirely too preoccupied with the reality of a _monkey_ on her _doorstep_ to pay attention to such niceties as which pockets Carl had allocated to the preservation of peanuts. For Puck the Monkey. She was still fairly stuck on this last bit.

'I thought I'd bring him home,' said Carl, ever elucidating.

'I see that,' said Una. From Carl's arms, the monkey clapped its clawed little hands and made a noise Una couldn't parse and didn't try to. On the stoop, Carl shifted awkwardly and said, suddenly hesitant, 'You don't _mind_ , do you? About Puck? I thought maybe he'd be good company.'

On cue, Puck launched into a voluble diatribe about something with great rapidity and conviction. Heat shimmered in the air, almost tangible between the three of them, and Una stepped aside to let Carl and Puck the monkey into the little house on Evelyn Road, if for no better reason than Aunt Martha would not have done it and Una lived in terror of even accidentally turning into Aunt Martha.

'You really don't mind?' asked Carl, setting the monkey down and beaming a dazzling smile in Una's direction. It was impossible to resist _that_ at any rate. She'd put up with the almost certain hassle of half a dozen monkeys should Carl only continue to radiate sheer delight like that.

'I really don't mind,' said Una, and meant it.

She went on trying to mean it as Puck hauled his matted self up onto the living room sofa and commenced to shell peanuts thereon. Force of habit she stuck a chipped saucer proximate to him – _not_ Mother's Gladstone Blue Ribbon – and almost resolved to like him when Puck directly commenced to use it as intended. She decided absolutely not to hold his interference in Carl's library against him. After all, Carl's library was scattered in disparate fashion across several bookshelves, side and coffee tables, and assorted haphazardly stacked books, the filing of which made sense only to the librarian. Probably Puck's migrating books across the room or turning them upside-down as he felt occasion warranted did not massively affect their classification. Besides, Carl was supervising and seemed not at all perturbed. She told herself she was entirely sympathetic when Puck picked up that day's stack of ACS related marking and deposited it on the floor. She continued to insist sympathy when Puck _sat_ on the marking on the basis that it was probably more comfortable than it was legible.

'Shall I make tea?' Una asked in the face of Puck's overturning of Carl's chess set.

'Please,' said Carl. He had sat down upon the floor, the better, apparently, to reassemble the chess board with a mind to making a pupil out of Puck. Ruather the monkey than herself, Una supposed. She was almost to the kitchen when Carl called, seemingly as an afterthought, 'Be sure to remember the sugar. Puck takes three lumps in his tea.'

 _Puck took_ …Una quietly said a requiem prayer for the departure of mundanity from her life. Presently there was a monkey with a sweet tooth and a taste for tea and peauts in her living room making an imperfect study of chess. That was nothing. It could be a frog in a Sunday School, or an eel, or…On second thought, it was probably better not to think about all Carl's past skittering, scaled pocket cohabitants. And anyway, Puck was _not_ in the living room learning chess, because he was presently perched atop the kitchen whatnot, marching the black Queen – at least Una _thought_ it was the Queen – across the top of the teapot in Gladstone Blue Ribbon.

Una gestured at the door. She had the distinct impression that not only was she too short for this gesture, but that Puck didn't care for it. She had no doubt he understood; he swung his legs against the Whatnot and chattered at her. An ungenerous person might have said he laughed. Una was trying for generosity.

Una stared at Puck. Puck stared back. He went on marching the black Queen around the rim of the teapot; it flashed inkily obsidian in the sunlight, a striking contrast against the lacy Gladstone roses. Una folded her arms and adopting her severest classroom voice, said to the monkey on the whatnot, 'Out.'

Puck verily grinned. This was sufficiently disconcerting that Una risked turning her back on the much-valued teapot and set about filling the kettle with water. Puck, being as it transpired, aptly named, followed her. He climbed into the sink with a war-whoop to make any respectable mortal's hair stand on end, and commenced splashing. On the one hand, he was now safely away from the Gladstone china. On the other, he was presently turning Una's kitchen into his own personal paddling pool.

'Carl?' said Una to the direction of the doorframe. 'Could you possibly…'She was not entirely sure how to finish. Remove the monkey? Shut off the water? Return your pet to the botanic gardens?

Carl hummed and padded to the doorway, whence he stood taking in the spectacle for several long seconds. Una, having decided she could not possibly fight every Puck-inspired battle, was retrieving a tea chest from overhead.

'Could it possibly be China tea?' asked Carl, suddenly alert. 'Do you mind? Only it's Puck's favourite, you see.'

'Carl,' said Una warningly, so that he blinked and twitched his shoulders. She still set the tea chest aside, though.

'Sorry,' Carl said. 'Something the matter?'

Una contorted her neck so that she was nodding over her shoulder and round the tea chest at Puck, still bent on re-enacting the flood God sent Noah. 'I really don't think,' she said with difficulty, 'he should be doing that.'

'Oh,' said Carl, as though taking the scene in for the first time. 'Possibly not. Puck!'

The effect was electric. Puck broke off his splashing and paddling and swivelled to face Carl. 'Let's leave the experts to work, shall we?' said Carl, brightly. Puck did not look, in Una's opinion, terribly convinced. By way of a peace offering, she rescued the abandoned Queen from the whatnot and approached Puck with it. This was not, as it transpired, the right move, because Puck snarled, snatched it and batted at Una's hand much to say _That is my chess piece, and I will thank you to leave it wherever I see fit to deposit it._

'Come on,' said Carl, invitingly, and the law of contraries being in good, working order, off scampered Puck into Carl's outstretched arms, whence he crooned peacably to his chess piece.

They retreated to the living room, and Una resumed tea making. Heat the teapot and spoon the leaves; these were nice, comforting, normal acts.

Less normal, when she whirled round to deal with the whistling kettle, was the small, furry imp sitting on her kitchen counter. Una almost asked when he'd come in, realised the illogic of holding converse with a monkey and changed her mind. But there was still Puck on the countertop.

'You're dangerously close to the hob,' she said, in spite of herself. 'I really don't think Carl will thank either of us if you scald yourself.'

Puck clapped his hands. Whether this signified agreement, derision or disinterest was officially anyone's guess. Not even God, Una thought, and Una had substantial faith in God, could have parsed the whims of this impossible animal.

God and monkeys notwithstanding, Una could hardly stand idly by and let Puck run afoul of the hob. She tried to replicate whatever it was Carl had done that had previously got the monkey into his arms, but had hardly got within half a pace of Puck when something hit her head. Another half step and another something glanced off her shoulder. _Peanuts_ , Una thought, giving the whole thing up as a bad job. Much better to turn the hob off, and seize control of the kettle, preferably before His Nibs on the counter was similarly inspired. Accordingly, Una turned her back on Puck, said a prayer for the durability of the Blue Gladstone in the face of the peanut battery, and set about adding the hot water to the tea. It was china, because that was Puck's favourite. There seemed to be something deeply wrong with this logic, and Una stopped to remind herself she was being generous. Carl loved the monkey. She loved Carl. Ergo, she by extension loved Puck. Or that was the working theory. The fact that peanuts were pinging gently off of her person as she assembled a tea tray was sorely testing the theory.

She got halfway out the door with the tea tray, then stopped, turned back and picked up a piece of sturdy blue-and-white bone china for Puck, pattern indeterminate. Peanuts and floods were one thing, but she categorically did not trust him with Mother's Blue Gladstone. A fact Carl must have realised directly, because he picked up the indeterminate blue-and-white, turned it over, opened his mouth and shut it again.

'I thought,' said Una, 'Puck might like to have his own china pattern.'

Carl beamed at her. 'An excellent thought,' he said.

There was a clattering and pattering of delicate feet on cedar floors and Puck appeared, damp, but utterly pleased with himself, on Una's heels and followed them out to the veranda.

Una set the tea tray down on a low-slung table with a rattling to rival Puck's teeth. This delighted Puck, who threw himself wholeheartedly into animated discussion with the Gladstone Blue Ribbon.

'And now,' said Carl loftily, 'for our next trick, my assistant shall pour tea. Puck?'

Una watched warily as Puck scrabbled onto the coffee table and wrapped his clawed little hands around their mother's Blue Gladstone. It looked _very_ fragile in those dainty, even delicate hands. Somehow though, it did not shatter. A stream of amber liquid tumbled out of the spout, albeit from the spectacular height Puck had hefted it to, but nonetheless fell clandestinely into the bystanding teacup. Una released a breath she had not intended to hold and opened her mouth to say something to forestall the pouring before they were facing yet another flood. There was no need. Puck, apparently well trained, set the teapot down, picked up the sugar bowl and turned to Carl.

'You take just the one, don't you?' said Carl, to Una. Una nodded, having quite run out of things to say.

'One sugar, Puck,' said Carl, and so Puck seized the tongs – and Una really had thought he _wouldn't_ – plucked a sugar cube out of the dish, and deposited it in the teacup with a satisfying _plop!_ Down went the bowl of sugar. Up went the milk jug. Puck cocked his head to one side and surveyed Carl patiently. Getting no response, he swivelled warily towards Una, milk jug still in hand.

'Better let her do that one,' said Carl. 'There's a real alchemy to it. Even Mother Rosemary can't gauge it right.'

It seemed impossible to suppose any of this made sense to Puck, and yet, he set the jug down with a rustle, picked up the teacup and saucer, and held it securely in his two impish hands. Then he swivelled round so that he was facing Una. Unsolicited, he clambered onto Una's knee and thrust the teacup into her hands. There was some tea lost in the transfer, and Puck squeaked the squeak of the righteously indignant. It was minimal, though, and Una tipped the contents easily from saucer to teacup while Puck's eyes widened before her. Forgetting the milk entirely, he seized upon the teacup Una had mentally designated his, filled it with tea, and proceeded to pour it from teacup to saucer and back again, all the while squealing his delight. Occasionally he paused to clap his hands.

Una did not dare risk disturbing their tentative truce with a reach for the milk jug. Similarly, Carl's own tea was a lost cause. None of this lessened the contagion of Puck's glee. Back went the tea, saucer to teacup and teacup to saucer, so that Una bit her cheek to check a smile. She had an idea Carl had once said it unsettled monkeys. Or perhaps that was some other creature. In any event, it was patently obvious mundanity had exited out the window and they were doomed to never be short of laughter – and probably more than a few implausible anecdotes – hereafter.


	10. The Fine Art of Gremlin-Wrangling

_I can't help feeling I should have something bonfire-themed for you, under the circumstances. Alas, I have not, only a lot of original characters getting an airing inside a universe that I swear is still tangentially connected to Anne-ish things. With thanks always to anyone reading and/or reviewing, and following along with this pocket of universe._

* * *

March, 1928

'…And there are spare blankets in the – 'Linen closet,' chorused Kitty and Teddy before Judith Carlisle could get to the end of this thought.

'You did say,' said Teddy, and grinned at her. 'You also said,' before she could possibly rehash the list again, 'about where to find the girning water, caster oil, towels…Kitten, I've missed something off. What have I missed?'

Here Teddy looked expectantly at Kitty, who, ever helpful, shrugged. 'We'll be _fine_ ,' said Kitty, doing what Teddy made to be a convincing performance in the face of overwhelming odds. Though, all fairness to Kitty, it wasn't as if they had never wrangled gremlins before. It was purely that Teddy could never recall previously having done so under quite these circumstances. The gremlins flocked to kiss maternal cheeks goodbye and hug paternal shoulders and Teddy took a mental tally; Christopher was coming up out of a fever, which he had thoughtfully passed on to Helen. Sophy had, god bless her forever, eschewed the fever but had picked this month to be colicky. Iain's ears were temperamental and achy at best, which left them with two malcontent infants, and two children not-quite running temperatures. Toby Carlisle, as the Head Gremlin was nonplussed about being lumped in with the children for the evening, but otherwise, thank heaven, healthy, while half a dozen of his kindred couldn't decide if they had given Christopher his fever or inherited it from him. It was a dizzying cocktail.

'You have the number for the Crown Imperial?' asked Faith. Teddy said he had, and if he didn't know better, he could have _sworn_ the Doc's wife looked disappointed by this revelation.

'And you'll ring if you should find you need another set of hands?' this was from Mara, who somehow managed to look both reserved about the prospect of an evening out and simultaneously elegant. Blue, as ever, suited her.

'We could swap,' said Kitty to her, which was clearly the right answer because it got a laugh and a toss of Mara's golden head. Teddy didn't blame her; she'd more than earned an evening away from Iain's everlasting earaches. Clearly Shirley thought so too, because he swatted lightly at Kitty's shoulder and said, 'Not on your life.'

'Oh, well,' said Kitty, 'I'll be sure to tell the gremlin in question your feelings on the matter.'

More laughter among the adults.

Little Rachel Carlisle pulled on the Inspector's arm and said with all the earnestness of ten, 'You _will_ come in and kiss us goodnight, won't you Daddy? Even if it's _ages_ and _ages_ before you get home?'

'And tell us all about it in the morning?' said Tibby before anyone could reasonably answer. The Inspector promised most solemnly, and hefted Tibby up into his arms for a final goodbye kiss.

'And _Ima_ too?' said Tibby, from the safety of this position.

'Of course, Darling,' said Judith. If she sounded mildly distracted, Teddy forgave her; somewhere along the way baby Nattie had cunningly wound her arms around Judith's neck and become an implacable stole of limbs and tawny hair.

Oh, it was shaping up to be a memorable night, Teddy was certain of it. The Inspector had begun to whistle a tuneful rendition of some number or other that Teddy assumed to be on that evening's program. A handful of gremlins took it up while Teddy tried and failed to intervene in the vexed case of Nattie Carlisle's fingers and her mother's enmeshed pearls.

 _High nooooon, high nooooon! The dark of the ni-ight's h-igh noon!_ Wheezed Christopher with more rhythm than tunefulness. Kitty bit her cheek and Rachel joined in, which meant that Ben followed her. Tibby even climbed out of the Inspector's arms to bolster the chorus. The Doc was looking at the clock and beginning to twitch gently.

'You go on ahead,' said Teddy to him. 'If no one else minds, I mean.'

'Most sensible thing anyone's said yet,' said the Inspector, and hands now free, fished a packet of tickets out of his pockets. 'Take these, and Judith and I will catch you up, just as soon as Miss Limpet here relents.'

'Miss Limpet,' said Judith with what anyone else might have called pointed emphasis, 'has an understandable aversion to _Ruddigore_.'

'You mean bloody minded cheek,' said the Inspector, occasioning another bout of laughter. Teddy thought about preserving small ears, decided the damage had probably been done eons ago, anyway, and resumed the gremlin-wrangling with Judith.

'Kitten,' he said over his shoulder, 'do me a favour and find some nice, tempting nibbly thing in the pantry, will you? And bring it here?' Off Kitty went, dark head bobbing conspiratorially.

Said Mara, mildly, 'You'll spoil their dinner,' which wasn't _wrong_ , but Teddy was choosing his battles. Mind, because it was Kitty he'd sent, and not, say, feverish Helen, she came back with some lovely, sticky, jammy concoction that while almost certainly tempting was going to doom Judith Carlisle's dress, never mind the pearls, before she'd got out of the house. On the other hand, Nattie half-twisted round to grab at said jammy, sticky pastry, which gave Teddy enough leverage to unburden Judith of her small hostage-taker, and cart her, jammy pastry and all, into _his_ arms.

'Have a lovely time!' called Kitty after them as she waved them off into the night. It was cool for March, the air cold as it crept between trouser leg and sock. This did nothing to deter the gremlins flocking around Kitty, leaping and waving in their turn. She shut the door with a click, and Teddy relaxed against a nearby wall.

'Now what?' he asked of no one in particular.

'Now,' said Kitty, 'I have an article to write up, which I will be doing in the kitchen. Shoo me out whenever your gremlins need dinner.'

'Kitten,' said Teddy warningly.

'Deadline!' Kitty said, and brandished a pencil at him. Teddy was not entirely sure from whence she had procured it. Nattie jabbed a jammy hand in the vicinity of his neck, and Teddy resigned himself to being hopelessly outnumbered.

'Right,' said Teddy. 'Well, when you've _met_ the deadline, do me a favour and look in on us, will you? Make sure I'm surviving and all that?'

'You enjoy it,' said Kitty, which did not at all answer the question. Neither did the chorus of 'Circus! Circus!' the gremlins had started up. Teddy had half an idea that Ben had started it, but it could just as easily have been Helen (unlikely) or Christopher (possible) or, well, any of the Carlisles. They frothed and foamed at his ankles, pulling on trouser legs and scrabbling for his elbows.

'All right,' said Teddy, relenting. 'But Toby has to help out with the elephants. He makes an excellently-sized elephant, now.'

Squeals of horror and dissent. Rachel said with utmost derision, ' _Toby_ is _circus-master_.'

Teddy gave Toby an appraising look, half-expecting muttered excuses about this-or-that school assignment. But Toby shrugged and said, 'Circus Master it is,' and swung Ben up onto his shoulders, singing as he went;  
 _Van Anburgh is the man who goes to all the shows,  
He steps right into the lion's den and tells you all he knows!_

The rest of the gremlins shortly joined in, so that the words were soon ricochetting off the house more noisesomely than melodically.

 _The HYEna in THE next CAge.._

Jam-free fingers probed at Teddy's elbow and he looked down to find a concerned Rachel frowning at him. 'Doesn't that one get…scary?' She practically squirmed around the last word, and Teddy joggled Nattie so that she was tucked under one arm, the better to get the other around her sister.

'Better go make them stop, then' he said. 'Word is I do an excellent Elephant Ride.'

'The best,' said Rachel, and they went, arms linked into the tumult of the Carlisle sunroom.

Somewhere along the way Circus gave way to Ma-Jong, which, the rules eluding the younger children, ended in Sophy, Nattie and Iain sucking the pieces while Teddy fretted that they would choke and Simon Carlisle explained a version of Dominos that bore no resemblance to Dominos as Teddy had ever played it before. Simon won, Sophy almost swallowed her Ma-Jong piece, Christopher won the second round and Teddy finally detached Ma-Jong pieces from various infants. This led to tears, but at least he had pre-empted several premature demises. Iain wouldn't _stop_ sobbing though, causing Teddy to suspect his ears were playing up. Helen refused to lose a third round of Dominos, Rachel concurred, and someone (Tibby?) got out Jetan. No one being clear on the rules, and the rulebook possessing all the usefulness of a chocolate teapot, this ended in frustration all round, by which point Nattie was keening in sympathy with Iain and Sophy beginning to fret. Christopher and Rachel were plotting the untimely demisre of the unfortunate inventor of Jetan, and Teddy, while generally feeling he should discourage premeditated murder, couldn't bring himself to disagree with the sentiment.

In the face of a dozen protestations – he was _definitely_ counting the wailing infants – Teddy sent what gremlins he could to get ready for bed. He stuck the kettle on, and subsequently a hot water bottle on Sophy, which seemed to soothe her slightly. Kitty was still meeting her deadline, so he deposited Nattie in the arms of an unsuspecting Toby when he reappeared. He then banished Kitty and her article to the far-off shores of the Inspector's office in the interest of feeding assorted gremlins. Judith Carlisle had had the foresight to leave something appropriately thick and warm, bubbling on the hob, which meant all Teddy had to do was stir around a still-fussy Sophy and then ladle things into bowls. It smelled gloriously of onions, garlic, parsnip and a hefty dose of chicken.

In the event though, Helen had no appetite because of the fever, which meant that Rachel decided she was similarly not hungry. Since what Rachel did Tibby did, and Ben did what both sisters did, this lead to a gremlin mutiny. The vexing thing was that having let Helen off of her meal for perfectly good medical reasons as per his mother's _feed a cold but starve a fever_ adage, Teddy felt hard-pressed to argue the others out of their recalcitrance. Add to this the various Carlisle gremlins still ill enough to be short an appetite and it was considerably easier to write the meal off as a bad job.

To that end he marshalled the troops and processed them upstairs, dividing up rooms as best he could. He stuck the babies in the nursery and Helen in with the Carlisle girls. Christopher went with them since where Helen went, he did, and after that it was easy. Or that was the theory. In practice Christopher and the girls wanted an instalment of something called _Hamish and the Magic Mirror_ that sounded like Mara's invention, assorted Carlisle boys wanted Teddy to read out of _The Magical Land of Noom_ , and the babies just wanted to be held and paced with, preferably simultaneously, to which end Teddy required several more hands.

Then Toby surfaced to ask if he could sit up and read a little, 'Once the others are asleep, obviously.' This last said somewhat sheepishly. Teddy acquiesced on the basis that at Toby's age he himself would have done the thing anyway, irrespective of the parental dictate. He also seized the opportunity to hand Nattie off to her brother again, on the grounds that Toby could both read and settle her. Toby appeared to think this over, then shrugged around his sister, and padded away down the hall. He had swapped the _Van Anburgh's Menagerie_ of earlier for the no less lyrically alarming song about nightmares that was so popular with the Inspector and the Doc.

 _When you're lying awake, with a dismal headache…_ drifted down the hall as Teddy puttered back to the nursery. He checked Sophy and her hot water bottle and concluded they were in harmony. He then plucked a grizzling Iain out of his cot, hoisted him onto his shoulder and so armed, returned to Christopher, Helen and the Carlisle girls ready to navigate the wonderful world ofHamish and his mirror. Iain could do the sound-effects. Specifically, Iain could do the mournful, distraught sound-effects of whatever conflict-causing scenario Teddy's addled brain conjured up.

Iain was still grizzling – Mara would have called it girning – at the story's end, so Teddy scooped the baby back up and went to warm oil up on the hob. He had a sort of idea Faith had mentioned warm oil as a possible solve for little Iain's ears.

 _You're a regular wreck/ with a crick in your neck…_ came Toby's fluctuating voice. The song needed a baritone, and he wasn't quite that, or not yet.

'At least,' said Teddy to Iain as he dosed the first problematic ear – cue more wailing – 'it's topical, eh?'

Iain gave what was presumably another wail of commiseration. Down the hall, Nattie seemed to have acquiesced to the strains of her brother's imperfectly rendered patter-song. This made no sense, but then, Gilbert and Sullivan never _did_ make sense, if anyone asked Teddy. Also senseless was Iain's sympathetic response to Nattie, because irrespective of Teddy's labours of love over his young ears, he subsided directly as Nattie did. This was nothing to sniff at, because Sophy appeared to have remembered her colic.

Teddy secured Iain in his Moses basket and went in search of the littlest Blythe. So, hot water bottles were out. He'd move on to a warm bath and see if that didn't help. He was drawing the water when Helen manifested in the doorway, all tumbled gold hair and sleep-puffed eyes.

'My pillow's too hot,' she said. Teddy stuck the back of his hand against her neck, mentally adjusted for the fact that he was holding a hot and colicky Sophy, and decided Helen's temperature was up anyway. He tried, ineffectually, to remember what he was supposed to do in this circumstance. Stick her in the bath, he supposed, with Sophy and hover on the nearby doorstep in case anyone started drowning.

Helen said, 'I've tried counting sheep but they just go _boing!_ as they hop over the pasture fence, and it doesn't work _at all_.' There were several pertinent questions here, to Teddy's mind, starting with where on earth the pasture fence came from, segueing gracefully (as he thought) into why the sheep were jumping over it, and in which direction, and followed up with why they made noise – _boing!_ or otherwise – as they so jumped. He said none of this. He gestured towards the bath, and said, 'Why don't you hop in with Sophy? She might like to have her sister there, anyway. I'll be out on the landing if you need me, yeah?'

Helen snuffled and presently warm arms coiled around Teddy's middle. Helen mumbled something indistinct against his chest that might have been thanks, but might just have easily been the medically correct thing to do with Sophy. It could go either way with Helen.

Teddy went, steam pricking his nostrils, half an ear tuned to the gentle plashing of the girls in the tub. What he properly needed was Kitty, because she could actually sit on the edge of the tub and better supervise the watery proceedings. On the other hand, Teddy didn't much fancy leaving the girls completely unattended to go conjure her up.

In the event, Kitty saved him the trouble by clambering up the stairs two at a time and all but tripping over Teddy's ankles in the process. Teddy became painfully aware of this when the ensuing chaos sent something hot and liquid lurching onto his knees.

'Sorry,' said Kitty, recovering. She dropped down next to him and stuck something thick, warm and milky-smelling in his hands. _Tea,_ he realised seconds later than he reasonably should have.

'Deadline met?' he asked brightly.

'No,' said Kitty and she shook her head, sending unruly curls swinging. 'I just had this feeling you needed it.'

'Your journalistic instinct is on fine form,' said Teddy, and grinned.

'Hardly much of a story,' said Kitty. She leaned back on her hands and said speculatively, ' _Grousing Gremlins Conquer Constable…_ would it sell, do you think?'

Before Teddy could answer, wails from a nearby room signalled the wakefulness of one or more gremlins. This turned out to be Ben, nightmare-laden and scrubbing sleep from his eyes as he wandered slipper-shod onto the landing. He elbowed his way onto Teddy's lap with what Teddy made a healthy disregard for scalding liquids. He smelled of residual fever, cloves and lemon. He snuggled overwarm against Teddy's chest and said drowsily, 'Teddy sing?'

Kitty beamed at him. She said, the merciful ministrations of seconds ago forgotten out of mind, 'Teddy will very definitely sing.' Teddy, encumbered with toddler and tea, briefly contemplated the murder of one Catherine Foster, police reporter. He must have solved enough cases by now to pull the thing off convincingly.

'Sing?' asked sleepy-eyed Ben, and reality reasserted itself. There would be no murders (he'd miss Kitty) and Teddy would end by singing. Or he would if he could come up with something nice and normal that was neither about Van Anburgh's animals nor the practices of nightmare-riddled Lord Chancellors. No joy. Teddy sipped his tea, and hummed a non-comital variation of Van Anburgh in the lion's den.

'I think it's supposed to have words,' said Kitty, ever helpful.

'I tell you what,' said Teddy, shifting. 'It's officially your turn. Your story will be better for the respite. Ben, how do you feel about Kitty singing for you?'

Before Ben could register assent, he was tumbling gently into Kitty's lap.

'Helen and Sophy are in the bath,' said Teddy rising. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom as he said it. 'Keep an eye on them, yeah?'

'And what,' asked Kitty, as she struggled to accommodate the toddler perched precariously on her knees, 'will you be doing?'

'Haven't thought that far,' said Teddy.

He hadn't either. How he subsequently came to be at the kitchen table writing longhand about the first of the season's snowdrops _first called Galanthus in 1753,_ was a thing he never afterwards could explain. Teddy supposed it had something to do with his mother, who had loved her garden, and never had the time for it now. Though, gun to his head Teddy had no real memory of the journey from upstairs landing to Carlisle kitchen, much less what detour had landed him with the materials necessary to write anything, much less anything coherent. _There are twenty species…_ All Teddy was sure about was that he was still sat there, writing, _especially late-blooming this year, only appearing after the vernal equinox,_ when Kitty descended on him.

'All gremlins,' she said, 'have been wrangled successfully.' _…First spotted by the lychgate to Old St John's graveyard…_ A soapy jab to Teddy's shoulder brought him up sharply. He wondered, obliquely if this was what he routinely did to Kitty, stumbling upon her mid-story.

'Gremlins,' she reiterated, 'are wrangled.' Then, appearing to see the nonsense on snowdrops for the first time, 'What's this?'

'Nothing,' said Teddy, even as Kitty dived for it. Teddy made a grab to deter her, but it was half-hearted and ineffectual because even addle-brained and sleep-deprived Teddy recognised the futility of deterring Kitty from a trail that had caught her fancy.

'Oh,' she was saying now in tones that made Teddy's soul quail, 'Oh, _The Chronicle_ will love this!'

'Will it?' asked Teddy, despondently. He could not for the life of him see how ramblings on snowdrops led to publishable columns. No matter. Kitty's lemon-scented, soap-spattered hands brandished his scribbling like a victor's flag.

'They _will_ ,' said Kitty, almost-sing-song in her enthusiasm. The soap bubbles were beginning to leapfrog from Kitty's fingers to the paper, smudging the ink. Kitty did not appear to notice. She said,'We can give you a weekly column. And a clever name. Something botanical. Like…' here she gesticulated inarticulately in Teddy's direction.

'It's your project, Kitten,' he said. 'Far be it from me to tread on your toes.' Kitty verily scoffed. She rattled the paper in his direction, sending soap and ink flying and said, 'I don't speak nature.' But she hummed anyway and said, as if to prove that she _could_ , 'Jack Daw, or something.'

'Pine,' said Teddy. 'Jack Pine. I thought you were going for florals?'

'Much better!' Kitty said, and clapped her hands. Before Teddy's gut could commit to a sense of sheer dread, the door swung open and in came the Inspector with Judith, the Doc, Faith and the others bringing the smell of nascent greenery and pines with them. Not before time, either.

'Everything all right?' asked Faith, taking in what must surely be the perplexing tableau of a crowing Kitty and his own discomfited state of existence.

'Teddy,' said Kitty, before Teddy could say anything at all, 'is going to write for _The Chronicle_.' The Doc guffawed, the Inspector looked alarmed, and Teddy made faint but ineffectual noises of protest, see further the uselessness of deterring a persistent Kitty from her goal.

'Your gremlins,' he said instead to the incoming party, 'have muddled her brain.'

There was laughter all round as coats were shed and scarves unwound. Mara squeezed his shoulder in thanks, and Faith said something broadly appreciative. Mindful of gremlins the Inspector began to sing at hushed decible what sounded like _This particularly rapid unintelligible patter/ is seldom understood, so it doesn't really matter!_ And didn't that just sum the evening up, Teddy thought. Dominos, magic mirrors, and botanical ramblings that Kitty was even now turning into a column. Judith Carlisle, a thousand times bless her, stuck a cup of warm, spiced tea in front of Teddy. It smelled of cinnamon and sugar, and was the colour of ripe horse chestnuts.

He sipped at it gratefully, listening with half an ear as the others dissected that evening's production. It felt good after the chaos of the evening to let someone else order the universe. Even if ceding control meant newspaper schemes and operettas revolving with improbable prominence around Basingstoke, manners and aristocratic ghosts. Mad, improbable scenarios, but none more mad and improbable than the certain knowledge he'd do it again when they next asked. That was just the way the mad, improbable world turned.


	11. Matrilineal Kinship Tables: A Study

Toronto, November, 1925

Rilla's second baby – but third child, as was perpetually pointed out – deigned to arrive on a grisly, November day. Or that was the theory. At the time at which the telephone had gone and Persis had been summoned to distract the boys, the arrival was still pending, and any number of medical terms she didn't fully understand being batted about with alarming frequency.

That was why she stood presently with Jims at her elbow, and little Liam in her arms waiting for the tram that would take them down to the Museum. It was the kind of grey, sere day with an ambivalent sky and murky clouds. The kind that could neither decide on rain, nor snow, nor sleet, but had absolutely resolved on a bone-aching cold that pinked noses, stung ears and rendered gloves less than useless. A damp cold, Persis thought. The kind that smelled of dying leaves, wet horses and sodden wool. It made hats droop, dampened scarves, and felt altogether more like the winters Persis and Ken had spent in England in bygone years than like good, strong, Canadian cold. There was no crispness to it, no tang. Only the unrelenting leadenness of the swithering weather. It made the little boys tetchy, and Persis could hardly blame them. They had already stood the walk to the Rosedale tram and ridden it as far as made logical sense. That had been bad enough, and now they were waiting a second, the better to make an exhibition of the museum, there to dry out and meditate on things other than impending infants.

Or that was the plan. It relied on actually _getting_ to the museum, and so by extension, the tram running, which on the Sunday schedule was not a guarantee. But Persis knew from past experience with Jims that Cass's patented 'Tea Shop Diversion' would be, in this instance a lost cause. Church was not only beyond hopeless but in any event not long enough, and would involve dangerous proximity to Gertrude Grant, who got on Persis's nerves more than she didn't. It was entirely the wrong weather for the ravines and parks, and the college library was closed. That left the art gallery, and the museum, and of the two of them, Persis placed more hope in the outsized sarcophagi of Ancient Egypt than she did in the paintings of old-world masters, or whatever the current exhibition was. With any luck Jims would get so caught up in the process of embalmment that he'd forget to ask if his mother was dying. Or make the connection. Perhaps they had better devote the afternoon to natural history instead. Supposing the tram ever put in an appearance.

Liam was grizzling admirably. Persis rubbed his back and paced the length of the pavement. Jims said, 'Aunt Persis, is everything all right?'

'It will be,' said Persis, thinking it wasn't exactly an untruth, because so far no one had exactly told her otherwise.

'You mean,' said a doubtful Jims, 'it isn't _now?_ '

Jims, Persis decided, was getting too clever by half. She joggled Liam awkwardly the better to snare a still-dubious Jims into a hug. 'I mean it's always impossible to say until the thing's done,' she said. 'A bit like a legal verdict that, way, babies.'

Jims remained unconvinced. Persis, for one, didn't blame him.

 _'_ Only,' said Jims, 'everyone's always sending us away when Mum has her babies.' _Definitely_ too clever by half, Persis decided. She breathed sharply through her nose to collect herself, regretting it when the cold seared her nostrils.

'That's not because anything's wrong,' she said, in a bid for reassurance. 'That's because grown-ups get funny ideas about what children should and shouldn't be around.'

'Right,' said Jims, 'so, we could go back?' Thereby proving she had taken entirely the wrong tack and c. She might have known it, too. It also confirmed her rever-evolving opinion of Jims' brains, not that that really needed confirming.

It began to rain. Cold, drizzling drops that eschewed Persis' hat and struck her squarely on the back of the neck. They got Liam's face, too, which fact only intensified his grizzling.

' _Can_ we?' asked Jims with that much more persistence.

It was tempting. They had only to cross the road, wait for the _other_ tram, and then endure the short walk back to the house, where no doubt it would be warm, and dry.

'No,' said Persis sympathetically. 'We can't.' Then, anticipating his next question, 'I promised your grandfather. You wouldn't want me to break a promise, would you?'

'No,' said Jims. But he was still frowning. He said, 'So, absolutely nothing will go wrong then? With Mum? Only Cap seemed to think…'

He was cut off by the spluttering arrival of the tram. It was clattering, rattling, spitting rain water and petrol as it went. The air was thick enough with it that Persis could taste it sharp against the roof of her mouth. Clearly so could Liam, because he grimaced, buried his face in her shoulder and began to cry still harder. Persis got a comforting hand on his back, marshalled Jims ahead of her, and somehow got them all three on to the bus.

It was crammed cheek by jowl with people, all trying to get _somewhere_ , all of them damp. From that awful, leaden cold. The windows were condensed with the escaped moisture of so many woollens attempting to dry, and the air was muggy with it. On the other hand, at least it was warm. Persis got one hand around a pole for ballast, adjusted Liam against her hip, and gestured Jims into the seat an elderly man with a monocle had vacated for one of her party. From this place Jims tilted his sandy head upwards and said solemnly, 'Nothing _will_ happen then, Aunty? Do you promise?'

Oh, that she could promise the impossible!

'Jims,' said Persis, 'do you _really_ think your grandfather would let anything happen to your mother?' She watched Jims consider this, gnawing his lip in the process.

'No,' he said finally, solemnly.

'Well, then.'

'But it _might_ ,' said Jims. His lip was beginning to bleed. Awkwardly, Persis scrabbled about in her coat and fetched up with a handkerchief. It was all more elaborate and complicated a proceeding than it should have been because Liam was still balanced on her arm. She handed the handkerchief to Jims and said, 'Darling boy, did anything happen last time?'

'No,' said Jims, so that Persis began to think they were getting somewhere, praise God. 'But,' he said, intractable, 'it _could_. All babies are different, aren't they? And Grandpa Gil wasn't going to let anything happen to Mother Elizabeth, either. Susan Baker and Mum said so. That just _happened._ People say things do.'

' _Who_ says,' demanded Persis.

'Mrs Grant,' said Jims. 'She said it when Mum was making tea and I was coming downstairs to ask could I go call in on Robbie. They didn't think I could hear, but I did. She said...'

 _Of course_ , thought Persis uncharitably, and, thereby, quite missing the finer details of just what was said, _it was Gertrude bloody Grant_. It was things like this that got her hackles up against the woman. She was going to have stern words with Gertrude next time they had cause to be in the same room. Which would be soon, in all probability, with a very much alive baby between them, God willing. Words about how you didn't throw around talk about Death by Infant where any little pitcher with delicate, highly-functional ears might overhear and how in the name of God did the woman not know better by now? Persis could not say this allowed to a traumatised Jims, and certainly not with Liam still wriggling on her arm.

'I bet,' Persis said, instead, 'Your Madrun had a thing or twelve to say on that. Talking about babies around children out in the open like that.' Jims squirmed, uncomfortably. 'Madrun didn't hear,' he said. 'I didn't like to tell her.' Persis hummed behind her teeth. She didn't blame Jims. If it came to that, _she_ wouldn't have gone to Madrun with a confession of that magnitude.

'I just want Mum to be _safe_ ,' said Jims.

'You and Ken,' said Persis, swapping Liam to her other arm and marvelling at the sheer weight of a two-year old got up protectively against Canadian Cold. Vaguely she was aware she was being short with Jims in the way she was more usually short with Cass during an argument, and that it was unearned. Jims's wide eyes told her as much. She rubbed his shoulder in apology. Somewhere between boarding the tram and shunting Jims into its one vacant seat, her patience had, apparently, fallen by the wayside and her head had begun to ache. These things were not his fault. It had been one of those days. Ken tetchy, Rilla uncomfortable, Jims overanxious and Liam soaking the whole emotional lot off them. She had been trying to navigate the resulting landscape with minimal success. She gave Jims' shoulder another squeeze for good measure.

'I told you once,' she said, 'if anything _did_ happen - and that doesn't mean it _will_ \- I'd look after you. So would Ken. Cass, too, and the grandparents. No one is letting you go anywhere, darling.'

'Promise?' said Jims. It sounded very small and uncertain around the bloodied handkerchief. Persis tightened her grip on his shoulder. 'Cross my heart,' she said, then let him go. Jims smiled, dooming the handkerchief irreparably. It was worth it.

He said, 'Then we can go back? Just in case something _does_ happen? In case Mum dies of the baby?'

Talk about matrilineal bloody inheritances, Persis thought, and shook her head. Jims had got the Blythe stubbornness to the letter, less the bloodwork. If he didn't manifest a penchant for extravagant hats it was going to be nothing short of a miracle. She opened her mouth in the full expectation of mustering fresh patience and explaining that no one was dying of a baby, but was forestalled by Liam. He jabbed plump little fingers into at her inner ear and queried, ever curious, 'Where Jims?'

Persis opened her mouth to say he was sitting just in front of them, look, could Liam spot him, but the fact was that Jims was _not_ there. Quite when this had happened was anyone's guess. Persis put it somewhere between his suggesting they reverse course and Liam diverting her attention.

'Jims?' said Liam again, a creeping tremor in his voice.

Well, thought Persis, he couldn't have got far. He must have slithered off at the last stop. In the bottlenecked crowd of the tram he could have eeled past without anyone noticing.

'Shall you ring the bell, darling, or shall I?'

'Bell!' said Liam, jubilant, and, lunging forward in Persis' arms, gave the yellow cord an almighty tug. Ears ringing, they extricated themselves from the bus in their turn, shoring up just short of King St. It was too far to walk back, certainly with Liam on her arms, and much too far for Liam to walk independently. Next time – supposing there _was_ a next time – Persis was taking the boys to St George St and pass an amicable afternoon with them there. She made a mental note to this effect and underlined it for good measure. Treble underlined it and appended a corollary note to forewarn Cass.

As it was, there was nothing for it to cross over the road and wait for the corresponding tram. It was Sunday timetables, of course, so they were operating on a highly irregular basis. Jims must have arrived just as the previous tram set out, or something. Also, it was sleeting, the weather having finally made a decision. It was cold, wet and melted inauspiciously against both Aunt and nephew's good woollen coats. It slicked the pavement and made the air smell chill and damp in that tart way that bespoke temperatures below human consumption. Persis turned Liam's face inwards towards her coat – its sodden status notwithstanding – the better to shelter him against the worst of it.

Liam, had, inevitably, begun to notice his brother's absence again, and was beginning to fret with it. For the sake of her arms, Persis set the boy down, wondering as she did so just what it was about the little Fords that had them all convinced their family were liable to disappear on them and never come back. With Jims it almost made sense; His little history until recently being a string of ongoing arrivals and departures, see further his poor doomed mother, Rilla, James Anderson, James Anderson's second wife, Rilla again... But Liam had no such life experience; had, in fact, never known anyone to desert him before now. Well, perhaps that was it.

Liam stamped his feet gamely in the sleet-slicked pavement, sending little gussets of water up with each burst of exasperated effort. The tram was still not forthcoming, and the sky as unremittingly grey as ever. An auto whirled by at alarming rate throwing up sleet in its wake. The stuff missed Liam by inches but caught Persis squarely at the juncture between boot and ankle. At least this afforded her the grim inspiration with which to distract Liam, and for the next indeterminate interval she attempted to speculate on the thoroughfare with him. But of course, Liam had never got the taste for transportation, try as Jims might. See further his near-meltdown over mounting the tram in the first place. He stood, tugging at her arm, jumping like a jack-in-the-box, sleet-soggy, asking sporadically for Jims.

In the end there was nothing for it but to pick him up again, position his dark head against her shoulder, and pace the length of the tram stop. Her shoulder must have been soaked through by then, but Liam didn't seem to notice. Persis fancied he was sucking gingerly on the seam in any case. For variety's sake she tried explaining some of the indexing work the university had given her, and for a wonder, that seemed to settle him. That was why they were deep into a nuanced recapitulation of Dr Appleby's latest discovery on matrilineal kinship tables when the tram pulled up. It was every bit as densely crammed as the last one had been, but someone – presumably mistaking her for Liam's mother – got up and offered them leave of a seat. That made it easier. So did Liam's being either too tired, cold, damp, or indeed, all of the above, to offer more than token resistance to their submergence into the muggy interior of the tram with its fogged windows and damp wool smell. Still, Persis went on with the matrilineal kinship table digression until the conductor called the stop for Glen Road. Some very odd looks it garnered them, too.

Back down Glen Road, up South Drive, and on to Maple St. They caught Jims up at the gate to the house, whereat Liam made a dive from her arms, collided with the gravel, scooped himself up and ran pell-mell at the older boy's feet with a triumphal whoop of 'Jims!'

The wailing, Persis supposed, would come later. Jims hardly registered the ordeal. He blinked at them a little confusedly, then barrelled through the front door and proceeded up the stairs four-at-a-time. This remarkable feet being in excess of the length of his young legs, he collapsed halfway up the staircase and proceeded to climb it on hands and legs like a marmoset or pigmy.

Mother, hearing the confusion appeared in the foyer to ask, serene, 'Whatever happened to tea and the museum?'

'A cuckoo,' said Persis, with a nod to the scrabbling boy on the stairs, 'flew the nest. I don't suppose _you_ can convince him Rilla isn't dying?'

'Come here,' said Mother, still serene, without ever answering the question, 'and have tea with me, instead. Darling, you look worn out. Here, let me.'

Saying which, she plucked Liam off the floor, manoeuvred him out of his coat, draped it over the stair, and pressed a clean handkerchief to his forehead, where the gash incurred by the gate had begun to bloom little sanguinary rosebuds.

'I tell you what it reminds me of,' said Mother now, reminiscent. 'Is the evening little Walter walked six miles home from Lowbridge when Rilla was born. Did Aunt Anne never tell you?'

Aunt Anne _hadn't_ , or if she had, Persis had forgotten, a communique which got lost somewhere between her Mother's appropriation of _her_ coat and orchestration of the lot of them into Rilla's sitting room, where she presently pressed a cup of hot tea on Persis. Gratefully, Persis took it, savouring the warmth and heat of it after the protracted wait for the tram. It was _good_ to be out of the sleet and the damp!

For the sake of something to say, she pressed for further details of Walter's youthful misadventure, and then leaned back into the downy sofa as Mother commenced narrating. The sofa was soft and enveloping as a blanket, and sheer bliss after the overcrowded tram with its stiff seats and tumult of people. Persis closed her eyes, savoured the rich Assam of the tea, and let the conversation wash over her as water.

'Susan found him there – Jims!' said Mother breaking off abruptly, and recalling Persis's attention. This last as a curly head appeared on the stairwell. A scuffling of shoes followed as he slouched down the stairs and into the sitting room. Persis put out an arm to him and snared him into a hug.

'Are you terribly cross?' he asked, tilting his head to look up at her.

'Glad you're in one piece,' said Persis. 'I sort of thought you would be, but here, let me make absolutely sure for your mother, shall I? Mum, will you help?' Wordlessly, Mother set little Liam down among the chair legs and flocked to Jims's other side. 'Well,' she said, 'I count one arm…'

'I've got the other,' said Persis. 'So that's all right. Mine's got five fingers. Has yours?'

'Yes,' said Mother, dutifully circling each one with a finger of her own. Jims was giggling.

'And here's a foot…attached to an ankle, I see. Very promising. Have you got an ankle?'

'I've got a whole leg,' said Persis. Then, 'Liam, what do you think – do we have to take his shoes off to check the toes?'

Liam giggled. Jims squealed.

'Absolutely we do,' said Mother for Liam. 'But only after we check the ears. Susan will be terribly upset if we forget those…'

Jims promptly ducked his head and collapsed, laughing spasmodically, in Persis's lap.

'Not cross then,' he said, breathless.

'Can't be, really,' said Persis. 'I've just been hearing all about how you come from a grand tradition of little boys who go to extraordinary lengths to get home to their mothers and baby siblings. Maybe tell me next time you're planning such a stunt, though – fair enough?'

Jims seemed to consider this. Then he grinned what was unquestionably the Blythe grin at her and nodded.

'Promise,' he said. 'Scouts' Honour,' and he touched two fingers to his chest, then out towards her in cementation of this contract.

Mother got him tea of his own, white and milky, and for the next few hours they sipped at Royal Blend Assam and played memory with the little boys. It set Persis's teeth on edge, rather, sitting still in the parlour matching and mismatching pears with blueberries with blackcurrents on little pieces of card, but then, at least she wasn't chasing an errant Jims across the city. There was only so much of that sort of thing she could take in a day. Liam must have felt similarly; notwithstanding the noise and the confusion of the house, he drifted off to sleep somewhere between the fourth round of _Memory_ and Persis's third cup of tea. She settled him snuggly in the least ornate of the armchairs and folded an appleleaf quilt around him for good measure. Aunt Anne must have lately decided to air it, because it still smelled of the cloves it had been stored in, and competed with the lingering grit of travel on Liam's sleep-pinked skin.

With Liam asleep, they swapped _Memory_ for _Hearts_ to better engage Jims, and were only halfway through when a gratified Uncle Gil appeared on the stairs, proclaiming ebulliently, 'A boy! A healthy, iron-lunged boy!'

That woke Liam with a start. He burst promptly into tears as Jims tore off up the stairs again, all but stumbling over his grandfather in the process.

'I take it,' said Mother, 'Visitors are being entertained?'

'Very briefly,' said Uncle Gil.

Persis had collected a tearful Liam and was now walking the length of the parlour with him. She said, as she stroked his head, 'I don't suppose he's got a name? Not another aspiring newsperson, is he?'

'Anthony Aloysius,' said Uncle Gil with a twist to his mouth that looked suspiciously like a smile.

'Got off lightly, didn't he, your brother?' said Persis to Liam, who only snuffled noncommittally.

Jims was ensconced at Rilla's elbow by the time Persis had followed the others upstairs, Liam in arms. Ken was on Rilla's other side; they made a lovely picture, the four of them together.

'Liam too,' said Jims decisively, so Persis risked setting him down atop the eiderdown and let Jims get an arm around his scrabbling, crawling little brother.

'Didn't I tell you?' she said to Jims and smiled at him.

'Yeah,' said Jims, 'but it's _true_ now. You didn't _know_ before. No one ever does.'

He couldn't say fairer than that, either. The little room was warm with overcrowding, and smelled stiflingly of lavender and medicinal detritus. It was a potent combination. More potent was the familial tableau amassed on and under the eiderdown; Jims's rightness, Ken's relief, Rilla's exhausted, hard-won motherhood, Liam and the baby in the thick of it all. Quietly Persis slipped from the room, Uncle Gil, Mother and Aunt Anne following. Let them enjoy that immersive togetherness a while longer. They'd be downstairs, ready to brace against whatever came next. The sting of displacement from infancy, cross-city misadventures with trams, even another baby. It was, after all, as Persis had said to Jims the age ago that was this morning, what family did; the reassembling of the pieces, holding of things together. There was no kinship table that could document it accurately, the sprawl and tangle of life, but then, when it came to the point, it was hardly necessary, either.


	12. Great Rain and Much Water

_As ever, thanks to all of you reading and/or reviewing. As we go back to Singapore it's worth saying, if I haven't before, that while I've done some research, it's less than I would for, say, a published paper but more than I would when writing stream of conscious. That's to say, it won't all be exactly right, but as far as I can in the time we've allocated, I've tried._

* * *

Singapore, October, 1926

* * *

 _And there came great rain_ , read Una Meredith aloud to a tumble of shuffling, rustling children, _and much water_ …Here Una spared a glance out the window and reflected that the day's lectionary had turned unexpectedly apt. The rain that year was savage. It often could be, this time of year, but even allowing for the usual perils and dangers of a Singapore October Una couldn't recall anything like this. Middle Alley was flooding, to start with. Change Alley was following suit. Presently rain drummed tinnily against the windowpanes while contrapuntally those same panes rattled in their frames. In the ACS, Barker road, several small necks craned in the direction of the yard; there would be no spider races or cricket rounds this afternoon. Unobserved, Una winged a prayer heavenwards for the preservation of all teachers presently enduring the purgatory of Indoor Play.

The attention of the class was waning. Una stifled the mounting panic at the need to regain it. Three years of teaching had taught her that much.

'Remind me,' she said to no one in particular, 'The word for 'rain'…'

Several hands shot up and a volley of responses tumbled towards her. Una was in the midst of deciphering these when someone rapped smartly on the door. Immediately, the children hushed. _English only_ was the rule of the school, albeit one Una tended to conveniently misplace nine times in ten. Rev. Peach, standing in the doorway, knew it, too. Looking at him, Una did not think for a minute that the veritable babble of seconds prior was at issue. He gestured her into the hall, and she set the children to parsing Matthew 23, confident in the notion she would return to find them discussing something else entirely. Probably devising rules for indoor cricket. Or racing spiders. Both seemed plausible.

Una shut the door behind her. In the dim light of the hall, Rev. Peach looked more overworked than usual. 'Ipoh,' he said, without his usual, circuitous preamble, 'is flooded.'

There was, without question, a point to this observation, but for the life of her, Una couldn't see it for looking. She blamed the vexed combination of The Gospel According to Matthew, twenty-odd restless children and a fortnight's-worth of Indoor Play. Whoever had invented it deserved to be cast into outer darkness for at least the next forty years. Or perhaps wandering in the wilderness would suffice. Or just an evening with Puck. Yes, an evening with Puck might be mete and right punishment. He could throw peanuts on cue.

'So, naturally,' said Rev. Peach, infilling for Una unprompted, 'arrangements have got to be made for the children at Horely Hall.'

'Naturally,' said Una, automatically. Why hadn't she thought of the Ipoh school?

'Where are we putting them?' she asked now. 'We'll want beds – linen. The sewing circle can fetch round for that. And clothes – what are they able to bring? Do we know?'

There were easily another forty questions in need of answering. Rev. Peach let her bombard him with them, saying only, and that placidly, 'I knew you could be relied upon to help.'

There followed a frantic morning in which Miss Bertram was rustled up to take Una's classes. This freed her of the vexed Indoor Play, but left her to negotiate the influx of ACS children from Horley Hall. Where to put them, what to dress them in, what to feed them, where to get that food… By afternoon Una was convinced that for every question she addressed another ten arose. It was all one everlasting cycle reminiscent of presbytery meetings she had sat in on in girlhood, only less the religious politicking and plus half a dozen logistical nightmares.

By the time the school let out she was more than ready for tea, and almost missed Indoor Play.

Apparently this much was obvious when she returned to Evyln Road, because Di greeted her with 'Long day?'

Not for the first time Una thought how _good_ it was to have someone on hand who didn't speak Puck, but could speak Walter and appreciated innately the little ordinary irritations of the day. Carl seemed to live curiously adjacent to them - or perhaps, thought Una, as she stepped out of the wet, it was just that Carl's vexations were so very much bigger. She wrung water from her coat and spared a thought for Carl, the as yet unknown Li, and the risks so casually interwoven with happiness. Why, she wondered, as Nenni threaded her sleek spotted body around Una's ankles, did the best things have to come so hard won?

'I'll take that as a yes,' said Di, and Una realised perforce she never had answered the question.

'Sorry,' said Una, unwrapping a silk scarf from around her head and wringing that, out, felt cold and smelled damp. Opposite her, Di shook her fiery head dismissively.

'Trade you,' Di said, and before Una could argue, whisked away the scarf and swapped it for Gladstone Blue Ribbon, brim-full of Assam. Her taste, and Di's, Una noticed in spite of herself – not Puck's.

'You're supposed to be on holiday,' said Una, but ineffectually. There had never been any telling Di Blythe – no that was wrong, it was McNeilly now – no. Except that once, Una thought, with a grimace, when Dr Blythe had refused…but there was no good dwelling on that.

'I _am_ on holiday,' said Di, even as she gingerly patted the scarf dry. 'I just can't stand to be _still_. Blame Susan. All that talk about idle hands and the devil.'

'Cornelia, too,' said Una, inhaling the steamy, tannin-rich smell of the tea. Di nodded sagely. She hung Una's scarf on its appointed peg and said conversationally, 'I got some marvellous shots of the boats going down Middle Alley, or think I did. I'm pleased.'

Una supposed that was the main thing in any holiday. She allowed Di to shepherd her into the sitting room, where Akela was lounging drowsily by a fire. It occurred to Una to wonder if that was Di's work or Alastair's because it was never Carl's. Niether of them were useful in the way of things like fires. This one crackled and sputtered conversationally, resinous-smelling and blissfully warm after the walk back from Barker road. The tea in Gladstone Blue Ribbon could definitely be chalked up to Di and her everlasting need to get on with one thing or another. Una cradled her teacup close and shook her head indulgently, savouring the warmth of the china as it seeped into her chilled fingers. Nothing got into the soul, to Una's mind, faster than the drab coldness of unrelenting rain.

'I tell you,' said Di, taking a seat opposite her, 'the only thing our Wandering Merediths do differently to the rest of you is make the wandering literal rather than figurative. Otherwise you're all as bad as each other.'

Una smiled, laughed and shook her head. 'Faith missed it,' she said. 'She must have got it from Mama. Or the Holy Spirit. Both, I expect.'

Di shook her head, more ruddy and russet than ever in the glow of the fire. 'I never could understand all that bit about gifts,' she said. 'There always seems to be such a dearth of Interpreters.'

'There's a dearth of quite a lot of things,' said Una, by which improbable route she found herself detailing the intricacies of the Horley Hall migration and the Ipoh flooding and all the attendant wrangles.

'I think,' she said, wrapping up, 'we've just about sourced the stuff for beds. But the rest is anyone's guess. We'll sew what we can, I expect, but…'

'What you're going to do,' said Di, 'is write directly to Naomi Blake. She will then whip round the Glen and drum up more support than you know what to do with. Talk of gifts – hers is dividing the fishes and loaves like no one else.'

There was something in this, Una thought, with a pang for her old Kingsport friend and bygone afternoons of shared mission work. She hummed appreciation, the morning's undertaking feeling suddenly incrementally more achievable.

'She will, won't she?' said Una to no one in particular. Di nodded anyway. Nenni minced her way along the settle to Una's knees, whereupon she circled three times with great meticulousness before assembling herself in a spotted doughnut of purring feline, paws carefully pillowing her velveteen chin. Thus arranged she commenced to thrum like a motor engine.

Una _did_ write, and the letter went out, and the word no doubt forth to Glen St Mary that Una Meredith and the ACS needed everything from teaching supplies to clothing for the influx of Horley Hall children. A telegram shortly followed that Naomi had similarly alerted Kingsport to the problem and she and the Rev. Blake were attacking it as best they could.

In the meantime though, she would have double the usual number of children to teach and, accordingly, double the amount of marking. There were uniforms to sew, pending the parcels from Canada, and Di, helping, said it reminded her of the war.

'Piecing lives and pinning hopes,' she said with a smile that was dimmer than it ought to have been.

'Mind you,' finishing off a seam, 'this has all the urgency and somehow none of the dread. Why do you suppose that is?'

'I think,' said Una as she battled Puck for possession of a thimble, the war has thrown off the scale of everything. Little things seem terribly important and big things feel ordinary - or at least manageable - like this flood _._ ' And some things, Una thought but neglected to say, like Carl's evolving friendship with the enigmatic Li, remained as unnavigable as ever before. Puck made a fresh bid for the thimble and Nenni, spotting her prey in the wild, made a grab for an unsuspecting spool of thread. Di made to intervene, but Una said mildly, 'Let her have it for a bit.'

Di snorted. White thread ran riot across the floor of Trinity House, Nenni's paws click-clacking after it with aplomb. Di said, 'Here I thought you of all people, never played favourites.'

'I didn't,' said Una. 'Until I met Puck.'

Di laughed a wonderful, silvery laugh, almost the twin to Walter's, even now. Una thought with a pang that she would miss Di, when, inevitably, she and Alastair headed for home at the end of the month. She must have said it aloud, because Di broke off her sewing to wind an arm around Una's neck.

'And I you,' she said. 'If you don't write a weekly letter full of anecdotes about That Monkey and the misadventures Carl lands himself in, I'm going to be seriously disappointed.'

In another life, Una thought, she would have demurred and murmured something inconsequential about not being much of a writer. Now she reached reflexively backwards to squeeze the hand resting on her shoulder. It smelled pleasantly of tealeaves, fire and rainwater.

'I'll do my best,' said Una, and meant it.

She certainly had enough to write about. The children came by boat from Ipoh, because the causeway was flooded and there was no hope of running a train into the city. Una helped collect them from the quay, sopping wet and clutching precious bundles to their chests. They wobbled on the docks, still unsteady from the banana boats, and she steadied them as best she could. They snaked through the streets in crocodile fashion, though how or why their ragged line should be considered halfway like a crocodile defied Una in the explanation.

 _Carl can't explain it either, and says it's all wrong_ , she wrote to Di, _and I suppose he would know. More like a snake, he makes them, and a ragtag one at that. Mind you, it hardly seems to matter in the greater scheme of things_.

This included but was not limited to overcrowded classrooms, still more crowded dormitories, and _still_ no relief from the dreaded Indoor Play. Somehow, this seemed the greatest evil of all. _It happens every year_ , ran yet another letter, _and every year it catches me off-guard._ This year, Una supposed it was all the worse for there being twice as many children and, in consequence, twice as much frustrated energy. Also the lesser but equally vexed problem of twice as much marking. _Not_ , she confessed to Di, _that there's time for it, between teaching them, and sewing for them and half a dozen other things that none of us minds doing, but do take time. _

There were not enough desks. That was the first problem to rear its head once the sodden snake-cum-crocodile of relocated children had been settled. Una tackled it head-on by reallocating of cushions from Trinity House to her classroom. Of course, these manifestly got in the way of such wooden desks as the little room _did_ have, so Una pushed those up against the wall. They smelled of damp; everything smelled of damp. With the desks out of the way she sat her collection of children down on the floor, in the name of equality, the better to fit everyone in. It was impossible to write like that, of course. This became apparent in a more than usually haphazard rendering of Dictation. So back Una went to Trinity House, Evelyn road in the evening and mined Carl's library for the largest, most neglected books to do double duty as desks. Several of these were encyclopaedias, and sporadically Carl was heard to lament their vanishing. When this happened, Una did her best to eke out the book in question, tuck it awkwardly under one arm and heft it home through the rain.

 _You would probably have a stern word for him,_ , she wrote to Di, _but it's_ Carl _and I've never been any good at telling him No. Besides, there's always another book or ten I can swap in without much bother. He has so_ many _and he forgets the ones not directly under his nose. Besides, they make excellent, durable umbrellas - only don't say to your mother that I said so!_

The rain went on, and the little ACS school on Barker road stood firm in the face of the mounting water. Parcels began to arrive to the cumulative relief of Una, the Rev. Peach and the ACS generally. By then Una had quite forgot the _English Only_ rule in an effort to inspire amity between the Horley Hall and Barker Road cohorts, so that more often than not her classroom was overrun with the merry babel of something the Rev. Peach called _Baba Malay_. As she told Di, _it's neither Tamil, nor Chinese nor English but half a dozen languages at once and all anyone can do to keep up with them. I should love to hear Faith's opinion on it – she has such a knack with languages_. But Faith, of course, was in Kingsport, working with the Rev. Blake to see the Barker Road school had all the medical supplies it needed, in addition to the incoming clothing and paper stock. It was all keenly appreciated, and caused the women's sewing circle no end of relieved fingers, but there was no sidestepping the children's rising overtiredness and a healthy dose of homesickness. _In quiet moments_ , she wrote between dictation assessments, _it is all a bit much._

This last, at least, got through. There was no otherwise accounting for the afternoon Una arrived home to find Carl clumsily shuffling the contents of the living room about, while Nenni watched horrified from the mantel.

'Carl,' said Una, helpless, ' _what_ are you doing?'

'I'm making space for your Ipoh children,' said Carl, as if this was very obvious.

Several things occurred to Una as conversational rejoinders. None of these managed to translate themselves from thought into speech pattern. She shook water from her scarf and said inarticulately, 'You…'

'Well, they can't all go on sleeping at Barker Road,' said Carl, undeterred. He was a bit breathless, perhaps for trying to shunt the settle, but otherwise fine. 'Isn't that what you said over dinner the other night?'

Una blinked. Nenni looked disapproving. Carl paused for breath, bent double over the settle and said, 'That _is_ what you said?'

'Did Di write to you?' asked Una, because she was too flabbergasted to come up with anything more directly relevant. It was Carl's turn to blink. Nenni continued to look disapproving. Carl frowned and said, 'Not that I know of.'

'Right,' said Una. She e tried but failed to take in the crisscrossed stripes left behind on the carpet by furniture trails and the rings in the places where heavier pieces had long sat idle. None of it registered. They were only amorphous geometrical patterns made stark by the dim, afternoon light. But htere was Carl, puffing and squinting in the midst of it all, trying to make things function as God intended. Una close her eyes, breathed deeply and said, recovering, 'Thank you.'

'Whatever for?' asked Carl, apparently genuinely perplexed. Una supposed that made two of them. She pulled him into a hug, beaming and thought how Di would laugh and laugh over this as and when it got into a letter. Nenni, seizing her opportunity, leapt from the mantlepiece and made a grab for Carl's undefended ankles in retribution for his unauthorised reallocation of her furniture. They fell to the ground laughing amidst the crisscrossed furniture dents and imprints. An indignant Nenni, having failed to carry her particular, obscure point, streaked away. Oh, it would be a properly entertaining letter, Una thought.

That it didn't get written up directly owed largely to the attendant chaos in transferring several dozen children down the street and round the corner to Trinity house. There were beds to make up and meals to cater for, and Puck to mollify. This last was Carl's job.

By and large, he succeeded, too, Una thought. Or perhaps it was merely that the children were kinder to Puck than was her natural inclination. There being no possible way to accommodate the children around the Trinity House table, they took their meals, like their lessons, to the floor. And if Puck made to steal their food, the children gave as good as they got. If he threw peanuts, they threw them right back, rivalling his squeals of horror with battle cries of their own. When he appropriated this or that makeshift bed they cuddled him into submission, or else until he wriggled away shrieking his defense of personal space. Once, Una came home, marking in hand, to find them all at Ludo, Carl, children, and Puck inclusive. Puck was losing badly and the living room, such as it had been was in chaos.

 _And yet,_ she said, finally putting some of this latest adventure to paper for her friend, _I wouldn't have it any other way. None of us would. And when they go, I shall miss them. I shouldn't be surprised to find out it's true, the old verse in Matthew – and yet I am, for all that. For there came great rain, and much water, but the house stood firm._


	13. Fireflies and Guavas

_Happy New Year! Anyone else know how we got into January?! I probably owe you a Christmas story, but you'll jst have to get one out of season, because we're leapfrogging back to Singapore and spring, this afternoon. Frankly, we've had enough grey and cold to do us for the rest of the coming year!_

 _Thanks go out as ever to all of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Singapore, May, 1927

* * *

Una stood in the kitchen methodically slicing guavas. She was hampered in this objective only mildly by Puck, who was sitting cross-legged on the draining board lobbing peanut-shells at her for no discernible reason. Unless one counted that Una was hoarding both guavas and the salt meant to season them, which, all things being equal, Una Meredith did not count. The peanut shells, for anyone keeping notes, had their origin in the dish of peanuts Una _had_ issued the monkey in an effort to deflect his culinary interference. The effort had failed.

But that was as may be. So there was a monkey on the draining board and the house was still overrun with stranded but exuberant ACS children, only now beginning to make noises about heading home. So nothing. Carl's Li was coming up to the house, and be the obstacles ever so many, Una was determined the evening succeed, though Puck run ever so much interference and the children made ever so much noise. Hence, the guavas.

Finishing with them, she covered the fruit with a tea towel and began to unpack the Gladstone Blue Ribbon. She had boxed it away for safe keeping with the influx of youthful residents back in the rainy season; after all, it had not survived a journey halfway round the world to be overturned and shattered by a casual game of Tig. But it was Mother's china, and of course Li must have use of it. The thing went without saying.

Puck was creeping dangerously close to the tea towel. Una, hesitating over the selection of tea, turned on him and said with as much steel as she could muster, 'Don't you _dare_.'

Puck dropped the tea towel, shrieked righteous indignation, and flicked a peanut shell with bonus peanut at Una for good measure. Una did not deign to react and Puck took himself off to beg attention from attendant children.

Puck gone, Una resumed the ceremonial preparation of tea. Green, she thought, for Li. China was Puck's favourite, but Puck was not the company being entertained, and Una remembered hearing mention of Li and Dragon Well tea in the same sentence. Una shook her head; this was not its proper name but in the moment it eluded her. She would file it away for conversation later.

Presently, Nenni, sleek, spotted and regal was traipsing across the counter with all the grace and aplomb of a diminutive tiger. Really, Una thought, hefting the relevant tea chest down from its shelf, one would be forgiven for thinking she'd stuck a sign to the kitchen door inviting ingress to all and any animals. Monkeys, snakes, lizards, cats, oriels, mynas, perhaps a stray tree toad…it all seemed worrisomely plausible. She spared a surreptitious look at Nenni's mouth. No snake. No mouse either. Indeed – oh rare and joyous occasion! – no dead animals whatever. Not even a half dead one. This did not preclude the possibility that the dead thing was even now lying lovingly atop Una's pillow. Still, her pillow was miles from the guavas, which seemed the crucial point. Una gave Nenni a saucer of milk in gratitude. Nenni fell upon it with gusto and Una measured out the Dragon's Well leaves. _One per person,_ rang Rosemary's gentle advice in Una's inner ear, _and one for the pot._ She was putting the last spoonful in the teapot when Nenni in all her sleek, spotted splendour waltzed under her arm, much satisfied and joggled the teaspoon. Awry went the leaves. _Spring_ went Nenni as she pounced on them with vim. Her spotted paws splayed genteelly across the countertop suggesting to all the world just how effective they were at the evisceration or otherwise of unsuspecting fingers, tealeaves, or lizards, as the case might be. Una retreated with the teapot to safety. By the time she turned back round the cat was meticulously washing those same spotted paws, for all the world a perfect picture of feline gentility.

The kettle whistled, Nenni bolted, and Una was left to finish her tea tray in peace. The fireflies were out as she carried it onto the veranda. Una stood watching them, little winking ruby lanterns in the blossoming evening, and gathered herself. _Please God, let this go well_. Una made no bargain, only winged the prayer upwards on the back of a passing myna. It swooped down and snatched at the fruit, but Akela, bedraggled dog of the house though he was, roused himself sufficiently to bark the uninvited bird away. Off ran Akela after it, great mottled paws galumphing across the veranda and down the rolling green slope of lawn. The children fell upon him and lavished him with extravagant attention, the yard now twice as chaotic as it had been previously. Akela, needless to say, barked unbridled satisfaction.

Into this noisesome riot came Carl up the walk, Li on his arm. Nenni marked the occasion by stalking the veranda railing, liquid shadow personified in the evening light, a gleaming lizard suspended disconcertingly between her jaws. It had no tail, which led Una to horrified meditations on just where she might later _find_ the tail, but there was no time to dwell on that. Puck had settled himself, peanut dish and all onto the veranda swing, the better, Una supposed to infuse the scene with peanut shells. The fireflies winked and glimmered in the twilight.

'Hullo!' called Carl up the walk. Then, apparently noticing the lizard, 'Say, what present has Nenni gifted you?'

Before Una could answer, he had lightly disengaged from Li's enjoined arm and drifted towards the veranda, where he crouched down, and with eyes carefully averted from their feline-turned-idol, commenced to make a study of her prey.

This left Una to greet Li. She spread her hands and made her way down the walk trying to recall all those little, useful words the ACS children had taught her over the years. None were forthcoming. Nor could she place in that auspicious moment which dialect she would have wanted in any case. That they were all different she _did_ recall.

'Una,' she said simply, when it came to the point. Li nodded, and offered a slow-blossoming smile like a waterlily unfolding.

'Li,' said Li in her turn, voice light and lilting.

'I've heard,' said Una cautiously, risking the hybrid language of the ACS children 'so much about you. All good.'

Li's smile widened into laughter. She said, 'So have I – about you. Carl didn't say your accent was better than his.'

That made Una laugh, too; the thing was too absurd. 'I doubt Carl would know,' Una said loyally. 'Our sister is the best of us with languages.'

Li nodded, suddenly thoughtful. 'That is…' a delicate eleven knitted itself into her forehead as Li reached for the right relational connector.

'Di? The one who was visiting?'

'Faith,' said Una. 'But yes, I suppose Di counts too, after a fashion.'

They were at the veranda by then, having succeeded in navigating past children and animals. Una gestured Li onto one of the cushioned wicker chairs. It occurred to Una, joining her, that Li did not so much sit as perch bird-like on the edge of the chair. Impossible not to think she would fly off at any moment, like the myna Akela had so lately worried away. Una unveiled the guavas and handed them, gleaming across the table. Carl, still apparently conversing with Nenni over her tailless lizard, caught the sheen of them by the glow of the fireflies and said, 'Oh, guavas, mind if I feed one to Nenni?'

'I expect she'd prefer cream,' said Una. Opposite her, Li, still poised on the edge of her chair, said, 'Afterwards. Carl, you've muddled all your people together. Come here and explain them first.'

'Have I?' said Carl, perplexed. But then, improbably, loped over towards the tea table, folded himself against the side of Li's chair, smiled like a sunburst and said, 'Where did I go wrong?'

Li began to explain but was struck, mid-explanation by a peanut. It sailed through the air and caught her on the back of the neck. Li flinched, and Una's blood ran cold. She had a sudden, bone-deep feeling that Li had missed the monkey with his peanuts. She would think – but mercifully Carl was hastening to explain about Puck.

'You mustn't mind him,' Carl was saying, when Una had regained her composure. 'He does that to everyone.'

'No, he doesn't,' said Una. 'What Carl means is Puck does it to everyone _else_. I can't so much as think about talking to Carl without getting harangued for my trouble. He's been doing it ever since Carl brought him home.'

'Brought him home?' asked Li, her eyebrows rising higher by the second.

'I told you about that,' said Carl. Then, hazily, 'I thought I did, anyway.'

'He did,' said Li to Una. 'I didn't realise you weren't _expecting_ the monkey.' Another peanut registered against the back of Li's neck. For good measure one sailed further and caught Una on the shoulder.

'Can one expect a monkey?' asked Una and lobbed her peanut back whence it had come. Puck squealed annoyance. Li laughed. It sounded sweet and high like a flute.

'Perhaps not,' said Li. 'Still,' with a look towards Carl, 'you might have said _something_.'

Una shrugged. 'No harm done,' she said, and began to pour out the tea.

'Not to Carl, maybe,' said Li. She picked up a peanut and scrutinised it. 'I'm not so convinced about the rest.' Then, reaching across the table so that her fingers glanced off of Una and the teapot, 'May I? Do you mind?'

For what felt an interminable moment, Una froze, Cecilia Meredith's teapot still poised and ready to pour. Time spun to treacle and Una found she could not recall the last time she had entrusted Gladstone Blue Ribbon to anyone else's care. Then time snapped back into focus, and her brain unstuck sufficiently to remind her Di had had run of it when she had visited, and it had survived. And if Di, long-time friend of the Merediths could be trusted with it, then surely Li, who Carl loved… 'Of course,' said Una, and twisted the teapot's handle round until Li could access it.

Una needn't have worried. Handling the it with all the meticulousness a cat expended grooming its person, Li cradled the teapot and began to pour.

'Like this,' she said, softer and more lilting than ever ,the yellow-green of the tea tumbling from one cup to another to another. Down the line of cups went the Gladstone Blue Ribbon teapot, then back again, like a liquid musical scale that ascended and descended in the key of bone china, signature for three people.

'This way,' Li said, 'it is all the same strength.' This in English and with all the meticulous deliberation of someone feeling their way along the words. She smiled, a tentative, watery thing, and Una smiled back.

'I'll have to remember that,' said Una, and meant it. Li passed her a teacup, and Una traded her for the platter of guavas. Li took one, bit into it and smiled the full-blown smile of an open waterlily or maybe a full-blown rose.

'Perfect,' she said of the guavas. Carl swiped two and handed one to Nenni as she waltzed past their triumvirate. Not to be left out, Puck scampered over and plucked the second guava out between Carl's thumb and index fingers.

'Little thief,' said Li, but Carl laughed indulgence.

'If it stops him practicing his cricket arm,' said Una, 'I say let him have it.'

There was laughter, and there was tea. The fireflies winked and shimmered in the gloaming. Akela barked and went haring after something – whether it was a snake, a lizard or a blade of grass was impossible to say. The ACS children joined in and went shrieking and squealing after him. Una murmured some apology, but Li shook her head.

'This is good,' she said. 'Happy. They all are. Even Puck.'

Una hummed uncertainty, and Li laughed. On the edge of nightfall, the fireflies winking and twinkling like jewelled lanterns, it was almost conspiratorial.

'Next time,' said Una, 'we'll aim for both. Civilised and happy. Quieter, too.'

'Next time,' said Li, and they linked hands across the table in promise of it.

The light faded, the fireflies scattered, and when Una next looked out over the city, it was to see thousands upon thousands of lights shining welcome in the distance. They called the young people to taxi dances and extravagant dinners, strolls through this place or that. Carl rose and said something about one of the taxi dances. Li tilted her head, not disagreeing, Una thought, then turning said, 'And you? Will you come to?'

'Oh,' said Una, caught off-guard, 'no. Not this evening. But go, enjoy yourselves.' She nodded towards the chaos that was Akela, Puck and the children, still running amok on the sloping green lawn.

'I should probably reorder the house,' she added as an afterthought. The others nodded. Li pulled her into a hug. She smelled of lemon and jasmine. 'Another night,' she said. 'I insist.'

Una promised and went to call the children in. They tumbled up the lawn, Akela at their heels, Puck chattering volubly atop the veranda rail, better than any school bell or declamatory Caesar. _Friends, Romans, objects of peanut-throwing practice…_ Heeding the simian call to arms, or at any rate to bed, children sped past and Una kissed heads and clasped shoulders as they went, lingering only to catch the last of the fireflies shooting out over the lawn. She wished on it as it vanished out of sight; _For many more next times_.

There would be, too, she thought as the sky dimmed. There would be countless cups of tea in Gladstone Blue Ribbon, and Li's fluted, rippling laughter. Carl's sunbeam of a smile, too, and almost certainly more stray peanuts and dead lizards, though somehow these things mattered less than before. Certainly more fireflies and guavas. It wasn't a haven, not exactly, being altogether too chaotic. It hinted of safety though, and happiness, and even alliance in the face of simian onslaught, and those were things to hold to fast.


	14. Perils of the Night

_I'm back! There was dancing and winter, and more dancing. I owe a fair few of you reviews, and shall get to those eminently. Before I do, as ever, thank you to those of you reading and/or reviewing. There should be more to come and more consistently in the near future._

* * *

October, 1928

* * *

Miss Watson was a vampire. Helen Blythe had reached this conclusion after much careful reasoning. That said reasoning had been done at the terribly grown-up hour of Adults o'clock while sat atop the Larkrise landing the better to stay concealed seemed wholly irrelevant. That this was a perfectly acceptable place to be while the long arm of the clock inched ever closer towards midnight was backed up by the presence of Christopher at her side, spindly arms wrapped sleepily around the banister.

Below the adults were reading aloud sections of a book that thrilled Helen to her soul. Also that had convinced her that Miss Watson, like the unfortunate Miss Westenra, was un-dead. She said as much to Christopher, who frowned over this communique in apparent puzzlement.

'It's why she's so absolutely horrible,' said Helen emphatically, and almost forgot to whisper. Christopher twitched and looked around surreptitiously, lest they be found out.

'I really don't see how she _can_ be,' he said softly but urgently. 'I mean, the timing's all wrong. The sun's up at school. So she's probably just a…'Christopher hesitated, and it gratified Helen to see he was giving this point the consideration it was due.

'A _canonabal_ , or something,' he said with decision.

'Can't be,' said Helen. 'Canonabals have to be nice to the people they want to eat, 'cause otherwise they'd run away.'

Christopher, clearly not having thought of this, nodded, and wriggled on the landing step. From below drifted the sounds of the adults and their story; _The wind came now in fierce bursts...*_

'See,' said Helen, 'but if she's a _vampire_ , she can just hypnoticalise people.'

'Like Miss Lucy does with the children,' he sad and nodded approvingly. 'Right, so we'll have to look extra-close at her throat to see if it's scratched.'

'Her teeth, too,' said Helen.

The stairs groaned and the voices downstairs lulled. Presently over the groaning a shadowed voice boomed stertorously, ' _I am the great Gremlin Gobbler, come to gobble all gremlins who've escaped their beds!_ '

Christopher and Helen wasted no time. They jumped up as if electrified and scrambled away from the stairs and down the hall, darting into their respective rooms while the distorted voice called out with great deliberation, ' _Gremlin Gobbling to start in three…two…one…_ 'but by then all persons eligible for gobbling were, if not asleep, then at least respectably under the covers.

'Though, of course,' said Helen to Christopher when, later, they crept back towards the landing, 'it's really only Teddy. But we mustn't make him sad by letting on we _know_ it's only Teddy.'

'Quite,' said Christopher, in his wisest, most grown-up voice. 'He has such fun, you know.'

Helen nodded. She folded herself into the corner where the stair met the landing and settled in for more of the story, and then, when it had all wrapped up and the adults had stopped, lay awake in an agonised belief that every twitch of the curtains, every rustle of leaves, was Miss Watson all dressed up as a bat and come to drink her blood.

It was very hard to sleep what with prospective vampires lurking on the far side of the window, and to that end, Helen did not sleep. She lay in wide-eyed consternation watching the curtains and thinking over and over, _you may not come in, may not come in…_

* * *

'You look very pale, Helen,' said Mama, over breakfast. 'Didn't you sleep?'

'No,' said Helen, and kept it at that. In the wake of what Dad had taken to calling The Great Shorthand Debacle it seemed better to keep her answer to a minimum rather than trying to explain about how Miss Watson was secretly a vampire who wanted to turn Helen into one, too. Then it occurred to her that lack of sleep and paleness where symptomatic of vampirism, if poor Lucy Westenras was any kind of example, and that was something else to worry about. Helen ran her tongue gingerly along her teeth for signs of alien sharpness, but everything seemed normal. Then she looked at Christopher and saw that he was also pale, and worried that maybe it had all been a misdirect and it was _Christopher_ Miss Watson was after.

'Don't you want breakfast, Lamby?' said Teddy to her in his kindest voice and it occurred to Helen that she did _not_ want breakfast and that not eating was _also_ a sign of oncoming vampirism. Obviously it was too late and she was doomed. She had probably been doomed since before the Great Shorthand Debacle. She began to cry. Teddy got a reassuring arm around her and rubbed abstract shapes into her back.

'Perhaps a day off school?' suggested Kitty, and Helen nodded vigorously. If she wasn't at school she was away from Miss Watson, and if she was away from Miss Watson…but no, because then she wouldn't be able to check Miss Watson's teeth, or her throat for that matter.

Mama was saying, 'I'll just ring Judith…' when Helen recovered sufficiently to shake her head.

'No,' she said, 'I mean, I really want to see how _Annabelle Lee_ ends. I promise I'll write it out properly and everything.'

Total silence from the adults for a second, in which Helen became convinced they had discovered that Miss Watson was secretly vampirising Helen. They would now have to stake her, and this would make them very sad, she was sure. With great effort she forced herself to swallow a mouthful of eggs. Then Jem said, 'Not that I'm an expert, I mean, God knows Walt was the poet among us, but isn't that the poem where the young woman _dies_?'

Point two towards Miss Watson being a vampire, Helen thought. Why else teach a morbid poem like that?

'Don't ask _me_ ,' said Mama, with a laugh and a shake of her golden head. Dad said, 'I think it is, you know. Which begs the question what on _earth_ is she doing teaching it?'

Teddy said, 'The Inspector says – '

'Almost _nothing_ ever begs the question' chorused the other adults and Christopher. Helen would have joined in too, being likewise well versed in this pet maxim of Uncle Geordie's, but her brain was preoccupied with the small issue of vampires and becoming one. There had been that awful dream the other night…but then, that might have been because she'd sat up listening to _Dracula_ in the first place. Not unlike her recurring nightmare about tigers that had started after Dad had read them that great story about the little boy who tricked the tigers into melting into butter. _Now I'm the grandest tiger in the jungle…**_Oh, for the days when tigers were her greatest worry!

'Are you quite sure you're well, lamby?' asked Kitty.

Dad stuck a hand against her forehead. Helen supposed this was the moment of truth. But he said, 'I make her completely normal. Faith?'

So Mama came and it a hand against Helen's neck and looked in her mouth and agreed that yes, everything was perfectly normal, which probably just meant that Helen hadn't _actually_ become a vampire, but did not mean that Miss Watson was _not_ one, or that she was not planning on turning Helen _into_ one.

Still, it was heartening to know that for the time being she was still reliably human. Perhaps she should take garlic to school. Just to be safe. Did they have any in the house? Aunt Judith might have; she could ring up Rachel and make her promise to bring some when they caught up at the halfway point on the school walk.

Christopher got up from the table and Helen dutifully followed him into the hall, where she eked out her shoes and lingered over buckling them. It had suddenly dawned on her that if she _was_ still human, than she really didn't want to meet Miss Watson again, after all. She thought with regret of the parental offer to stay home and wished she had accepted it, and longingly of the protective garlic, which of course she couldn't take with her now. Nothing like cloves of contraband garlic to reveal her disloyalty to vampirical Miss Watson and get herself vampirism.

'We can check before class,' said Christopher in an undertone as he assembled his satchel for school. 'Noon's out of the question 'cause the book says she's very vamperised then, which makes it dangerous, and anyway, Aunt Judith would mind if we were late to dinner.'

This was sound logic. It did not mean Helen wanted to go on an investigation. She wanted to hide under her bed until it was all over, but on the other hand, she couldn't leave Christopher all alone like that. It wasn't the done thing. Terrible form. And they could hardly report it to Uncle Geordie, because the police investigated murders, not vampires. It was up to Helen and Christopher, but oh! How she wished there was someone else they could pull in.

'You'll be late if you don't start now,' said Mama, who was herself rushing out the door. Helen thought being late was an excellent idea. Then they wouldn't have to make an examination of Miss Watson's teeth. Of course, she wanted to _know_ – needed to know, even – but that didn't mean it wasn't terrifying. She looked at Christopher and saw that he was similarly reluctant. She knew this because he was making a terrific production of tying his laces, a feat he'd mastered over the past summer.

'You'll want coats, the lot of you,' said Teddy, perhaps louder than was necessary to catch their departing mother in time. 'It's raining out.'

Helen's heart sank. If it was raining then probably the vampiric Miss Watson would _not_ be asleep in her earth-box on arrival. Not that Helen knew where the earth box _was_ , exactly, but she was sure there _was_ one. All vampires had one. The books said so.

Teddy bundled Helen into her coat, which kindness greatly interfered with her dawdling, and then there was nothing for it but to face the vampires.

It was _very_ rainy, too. Great, fat, icy raindrops that slid off of Helen's hat and down her neck. Probably ordered by Miss Watson, now she thought of it.

'I don't think she can do that,' said Christopher. 'I mean, Dracula can't, can he?'

'Fog,' said Helen. 'He makes fog. So I guess he could make it rain, too.'

'Probably,' said Christopher. He sounded dubious, but not so dubious that he didn't commence dragging his feet in the wet pavement. Helen followed suit. _Anything_ to delay getting to the school and Miss Watson's vampiric lair.

'We could not go,' said Christopher, suddenly. The wind was whistling up their coat sleeves and the rain was working itself up into a positive crescendo as he said it. Still, it meant not coming into contact with Miss Watson.

'She might ring Mama,' said Helen. Christopher looked, if possible, more doubtful than previously.

'Not after that letter Mama wrote her, she won't,' he said.

'You don't think,' said Helen, 'she wants to make us vampires because of the letter? You know, sort of a punishment?'

Christopher stopped suddenly and sat down, so that Helen almost tripped over him and was obliged to join him on the pavement. It was cold and damp and moulded her dress to the backs of her knees even through her coat.

'I hadn't thought of that,' he said. They sat miserably on the wet pavement growing cold and shivery until epiphany found them.

'We'll have to tell Aunty Mara, that's all,' said Helen, suddenly.

'Do we?' asked Christopher.

Helen nodded vigorously. 'Yes,' she said. 'Because she's Roman, isn't she? Susan Baker says so. So…so…she'll have the waiver.'

Christopher blinked at her. Helen really couldn't understand how he could be so thick. 'You know,' she said, 'the con- con- _constabalised_ thing that seals up Lucy's tomb!'

'Oh!' said Christopher, understanding dawning. Then, eyebrows knitting together, 'Are you sure that's what it's called?'

'Definitely,' said Helen. 'Constabalised. It's what makes it actually God to them and not only pretend.' The frown in Christopher's forehead eased slightly.

'I don't know,' he said. 'I'm pretty sure everyone constabalises it. I mean, isn't that what Grandpa Meredith does?'

'Oh,' said Helen, who had not thought of this wrinkle. 'That sounds right. So, what makes it actually God?'

Christopher frowned. The rain continued to fall on them. Helen began to shiver. Christopher chewed his lip, considering, then, brightening, said, ' _Transtabularisation!_ The Romans _transtabularise_ it!'

Helen blinked at him perplexed, but Crhistopher was certain. 'It has to be _transtabularised_ ,' he said with triumph. 'That's the difference. I heard Auntie and Grandpa debating it once.'

It was impossible to argue such watertight logic. Helen accepted it gratefully, then noticed the frown was back on Christopher's forehead.

'You don't think,' he said anxiously as a raindrop slid off his nose, ' _we_ have to believe it's God for it to work, do you? I mean, really-truly definitely God instead of symbolical God?'

That was an unlooked for obstacle. Helen had to think about it. She was by now very cold, and did not want to stay sitting on the pavement with its growing puddles. If nothing else, people were starting to notice.

'Come on,' she said, tugging Christopher upright. She began to march them towards the school, if only because it gave them a place to go. It took great effort not to think about the vampire waiting for them in the schoolroom.

'I think,' she said, on consideration, 'it doesn't matter about us, you know. Only _someone_ has to constabalised it who believed in the trans…transtabular thing. Did I say it right?' Seeing Christopher nod, she hastened on, 'Well, anyway, since we can't do that to the waiver, and Grandpa Jo, who's closer than Grandpa Meredith, doesn't transtabularise things, I think it's probably all right if we just find someone who _can._ '

'You know,' said Christopher, 'I think it's more like biscuit, the waiver. Like the wafer things Aunty Poppy bakes, but fewer layers.'

'Oh, all right,' said Helen irritably. After all, it was his fault that she was now cold, damp and worried about vampires. It hadn't been _her_ idea to listen in on the adults and their reading. She'd just gone along with it because _he_ so obviously wanted to and it had sounded like a lark. If she'd known it would reveal the world to be full of _vampires_ …. 'Wafer, then. The point is it has to be constabalised by a Roman and I think Aunty can do it if we can't. Or she will know someone who can.'

Christopher said, 'We're going the wrong way for Fox Corner.'

'Well yes,' said Helen. 'Because we have to get to school to see about Miss Watson's teeth.'

The fact that her stomach was all knotted and her feet felt leaden was a moot point. Christopher said, 'We could do that tomorrow.'

'We could,' said Helen. They stopped short in the middle of the road, hesitating, and collided perforce with a loose-jointed, long-legged personage bustling the direction they were rapidly leaving behind.

'Hullo,' said this person in surprise, as a warm arm encircled Helen. 'Fancy running across you both. Rather late for school, aren't you?'

It was Grandpa Jo. A shame he couldn't transtabularise the waivers. Wafers. Whichever. He smiled kindly down at them, his hat dripping with rain, completely unruffled, in the usual way of adults by the fact of their lateness or being in the wrong place. This probably explained why Christopher, unprompted and without consultation with Helen, said, 'We've decided we can't go to school, Grandpa Jo. You see, our teacher's a vampire.'

'Is she?' said Grandpa Jo, and pulled them forthwith under a sheltering awning. Helen and Christopher nodded in rapid unison.

'Oh dear,' said Grandpa Jo, still very kindly. 'I fear that might take some explaining. Why don't you come back to the Manse?'

They did, chiefly because he still had an arm around each of them, and was propelling them forward like little, living appendages to his long-legged person. It was easier than not to trot along beside him, and anyway, it meant out of the rain, and possibly something to eat, and a safe place to go that wasn't Miss Watson's vampirical lair. And it was blissful to be out of the rain. The Martyrs' Kirk Manse was not big, or indeed particularly warm – it had a boiler that was reckoned by Granny Phil as having more moods than your average cat – but it was cosy, smelled of fresh baking, and there was a fire crackling away somewhere. Helen could hear it the moment they stepped over the barrier. The heat of it seeped generously into her sodden little limbs, which were really too spindly to stand much sitting about on pavements.

'You're back rather earlier than expected,' said Granny Phil, emerging from Helen knew not where. Then, as she took in Helen and Christopher, 'And you've brought guests! How charming!'

'They were just about to explain to me how Miss Watson came to be a vamire,' said Grandpa Jo, as if this sort of thing were a perfectly mundane occurrence. Perhaps it was. Perhaps he'd dealt with _scores_ of vampires. Helen was very glad they'd run in to him. She began to speak simultaneously to Christopher, but Granny Phil said with her famous imperiousness, 'Oh, no! Tea first. We'll save Miss Watson afterwards.'

Helen wasn't sure she _wanted_ to save Miss Watson, but now that she was safe and secure and among adults that _understood_ her dire circumstance, she was suddenly, ravenously hungry. Tea sounded vastly appealing. So she let herself be shepherded into the Martyrs' living room, and into the comfiest chair on offer. This wasn't much, because Martyrs' Manse, as Mama was fond of saying was the House Time Forgot and crammed full of old, awkward furniture that tried to force the sitter into expert posture. Still, the chair was big enough that Christopher could scramble up next to her, and the blanket Grandpa Jo draped over them was a jaunty, chaotic crocheted affair. Helen secretly suspected Granny Phil must have made it because some of the squares were really too crooked and holey even by crocheted standards to be strictly normal, and Granny Phil was famously haphazard in her domesticity.

Even so, Helen helped herself to an outsized rock cake and munched on it appreciatively. It wasn't _quite_ Aunt Judith's standard, but that was all right. Someone handed her a teacup too, and it was awkward to hold it on its saucer _and_ eat the rock cake simultaneously, but she managed. Some of the tea sloshed onto the blanket, and the crumbs from the rock cake were a lost cause - they _would_ insist on falling into the seams of the chair - but no one seemed to mind. She was onto her second cake and Christopher his third when Grandpa Jo said with all the geniality of a mug of drinking chocolate, 'Now, tell me about this vampire.'

Out it all came. How Helen had been humiliated, absolutely _humiliated_ at the hands of Miss Watson for daring to write in shorthand. 'And it was really very good, too!' said Helen, not liking to boast but feeling this was relevant to the point at hand. 'Everyone else said so!'

Her adults nodded conciliatorily; they had the utmost faith in Helen's shorthand.

'Well, and then,' said Christopher, not to be left out, 'we started reading _Dracula_ , and it all made sense!'

Well, strictly speaking, the adults had been reading it after hours, and Helen and Christopher had rebelled against the exclusion. They were in the habit of sharing things with the Larkrise adults, after all. Murder inquiries, newspaper investigations, bridge hands…it had really seemed _most unfair_ that they were cut off from this one story.

'And you know,' said Christopher, 'we went away whenever they caught on to us being there. You know, whenever anyone insinininuated that we couldn't be.'

Grandpa Jo nodded solemnly. Helen took over to explain how they had come to realise that Miss Watson, like the poor Miss Lucy, had been bitten by this ungodly monster, and now they had to find the constabalised wafer – she enunciated this most particularly – to seal up Miss Watson's earth box. Here, even with Helen's precise pronunciation, both adults blinked perplexity.

'Constabalised,' said Helen, again, brightly.

'I _told_ you,' said Christopher in his most irritating, older-brother-ish tone, 'that it was _transtabularised_.'

Only it clearly was _not_ , because that begat still more blinking among the adults.

'You know,' said Helen, trying to salvage what she could, 'God. What Grandpa Jo does at Easter except not symbolically.'

Dawn, or maybe only understanding seemed to blossom across Grandpa Jo's creased, round face. 'Ah,' he said as one enlightened. 'I begin to understand. Consecrated bread.'

Helen was almost certain this was what she had said. But not so certain as to begin to quibble now.

Granny Phil volunteered with a smile, 'I think they really want it to be _transubstantiated,_ darling.'

'Possibly, possibly,' sad Grandpa Jo. He handed Helen another cake.

'But you see,' he said, unflappably, 'if that's all, then I fear your Miss Watson isn't a vampire after all.'

'Really?' said Helen, shocked.

'Are you _sure_?' said Christopher. 'Quite sure?'

'Oh, yes,' Grandpa Jo said. 'You see, Miss Watson was one of the handful of people that took communion back at Easter. Very few people do that, you know. You have to be quite sure you're one of the Elect, and almost nobody is. Sure, I mean.'

Helen felt herself deflate. Little nerve endings that until now had been all ravelled up in tightrope lines began to unspool within her. 'Oh,' she said flatly.

Christopher was not so downcast. He said, 'Easter was an awful long time ago.'

Granny Phil nodded agreement. But Grandpa Jo said, 'Yes, but you know, I do believe I saw Miss Watson polishing the crucifix over the pulpit at Martyrs' just the other day – you know the one?' Helen and Christopher did know it, so nodded dutifully.

'And I really don't think,' said Grandpa Jo, 'a vampire could do _that_. At least, not without being in great pain.'

Helen didn't think so either. Neither did Christopher.

'The terrible thing is,' said Granny Phil, 'that as misfortune would have it, Miss Watson is your garden-variety awful person. A shame, really, I'd have helped you put a stake in her if it had come to that.'

'Then,' said Helen, defeated, 'I suppose we'll have to go back to school after all.' It would be dreadful, of course. Really, truly, unbearably awful. Miss Watson would be ever so cross that they had missed the best part of the morning, and worst of all, Helen couldn't explain! How _did_ one explain that one had shirked class on the suspicion that one's teacher was a vampire? Somehow, Helen didn't see that meeting with any more charity than her shorthand. Still, it was heartening to know she wouldn't have to inspect anyone's teeth. Even better to know she and Christopher were safe from the prospect of being vampirised in their sleep. She hunched down under the woolly blanket with its crooked crochet squares enjoying the combined smell of rock cakes and blanket.

'Perhaps tomorrow,' said Grandpa Jo. 'I think for today I'll put a call through to the police surgery and advise your father his intrepid vampire hunters are safe and recovering from their adventure. After all,' with a smile Helen felt was specially for her, 'it's arduous work, vampire hunting. Especially coming on top of the maligning of your character like that.' He smiled the smile of a man who believed all to be right with the universe.

If Helen was not exactly sure what maligning was, she did not say so. It sounded terribly grown up. And for the time being she was free from the twin evils of Miss Watson and vampires. It was hard to do better than that.

* * *

*Excerpt from _Dracula  
** _This one's from a book we'll save everyone the discomfort of naming, but the author is Helen Bannerman. Feel free to wander down a search engine rabit hole on this one; unlike _And Then There Were None_ I don't think this one got a mentionable retitle.


	15. Casting Asparagus

_Shall we say my Lenten discipline this season will be to post regularly? It might just stick that way. In the meantime, thanks as ever to all of you reading and/or reviewing. This is with love and affection to my father, who invented the glorious art of asparagus casting. For best effect, this should be done whimsically, over completely trivial things, like wee Dachshunds who steal spots. But where's the writerly fun in that?_

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August, 1926

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Dinner was inedible. This was not, Jims would afterwards explain to her, Madrun's fault. She had prepared a beautiful golden-brown chicken that verily melted in the mouth, and trimmed it with all the right things. There were roast potatoes that crackled when you cut into them, crisp outside and all soft in the centre, there were buttery carrots and decadent asparagus in a fine sleeve of cheese. No one could eat any of it.

Of course, thought Jims, in Liam's defence, he was at peek Asparagus Refusal Age. He picked up stalks with his fingers and snuffled at them in derisory fashion, before casting them on to the floor, and it said an awful lot about the kind of meal they were having that not only did Mum let Liam get away with it, but Cap didn't even effect the Long-Armed Wailing Monster persona that was supposed to come out when any of them got funny about vegetables. So _Jims_ took it on himself to be the Long-Armed Wailing Monster. Only, it didn't work because he couldn't wail as well as Cap, and Mum said he was making her headache worse. So Jims subsided and Liam was left alone to throw his asparagus on the floor as he saw fit.

No one was talking. That was the main thing. Well, Anthony was wailing worse than ever, his own Short-Armed Wailing Monster but then, that didn't count. Someone had to say _something_. Jims had yammered on for fully five minutes about just how good the chicken was, until it dawned on him that he was never going to get a response and the chicken started to stick in his throat, which made talking awkward, anyway. But the silence was worse.

It had been like that ever since Jims had come down to dinner. He'd _known_ something was off, because he'd heard Mum and Cap arguing indistinctly while he was tackling his sums. Something about a baby, which naturally, Jims had assumed to be Anthony in this instance. But then Mum had called him down to dinner, and he'd come, and there was Madrun's glory of a chicken, and a promising Shape on the sideboard for afterwards, and, well, no one had been _talking_ to each other. It was horrible. A bit like sitting in molasses, or heavy cream, or something. Or maybe really good, dense, sponge. Jims had heard the St George St aunts talk before about atmospheres that you could cut with a knife, a concept that before now had always mystified Jims. Except now he was sat in the middle of one, and no one was talking, and Anthony was red in the face with crying, and he really, _really_ wished he could go back to not understanding.

Jims started in on an anecdote from school, since obviously talking about Madrun's cooking wasn't going to do anything. Mum picked up Anthony, and began to walk the floor with him. She jostled him a bit, but the rest of them might not as well have been there, for all the notice she took of them. It made Jims feel horribly small.

He said, rather desperately to Cap, 'Did anything exciting happen at the paper?' because exciting things were _always_ happening at _The Toronto Star_.

'Not especially,' said Cap.

'Oh,' said Jims, and wondered what else he could possibly add to this discussion.

'Did they at least get any of the headlines wrong?' That could be fun – or funny, anyway – the words they swapped in for other words. Cap had explained how sometimes this made for a completely different story, and they would laugh at the departure from the intended narrative. Jims thought this might be _extremely_ helpful under the current circumstance.

'Nothing like that,' Cap said.

'Oh,' said Jims again, and he must have sounded defeated, because Cap added, 'Sorry, Scout, I'm afraid I'm rather poor company, just now.'

'Oh,' said Jims again. He pushed his chair away from the table and said in the direction of Mum, who was still pacing with the sobbing Anthony, 'I'm not very hungry. May I get down, please?'

He took extra care over the _may_ and the _please_ because Madrun was always going on about how important it was to get these things right, and while Jims couldn't see _why_ he was game to try anything that might be helpful under the present circumstance. Mum hummed what Jims took for an affirmative, so he scraped his chair back and bolted. He felt a bit bad, leaving Liam there, all alone, to hold the conversational fort, but his stomach hurt, and his chest felt too tight, and he mostly wanted an excuse to stop having to try to think of things to _say_ to people.

In the shelter of his room, Jims lay flat on his stomach, so that his nose was level with the braid rug that was supposed to be vintage Marilla Cuthbert. For good measure he tugged the Hudson's Bay blanket off the foot of the bed and draped it imperfectly over his person, so that he was contained under a haphazard tent. The late summer sun came slanting through the white stripes of the blanket and lit up the circumference of the tent in blotches of Hudson Bay colour, a sunset in red, blue, green and yellow. Jims rested his chin on his hands and tried very hard to think of nothing. Dimly he registered that he could no longer hear Anthony wailing. That was something. But then the argument from earlier started up again, about the baby, and really, it seemed very unfair on little Anthony to be cross with him. _Jims_ was strongly tempted to cry, in the aftermath of that particular monk's meal, and _he_ wasn't a baby. At least, he wasn't supposed to be.

Someone rapped on the door. Jims decided he wasn't home, and ignored it. It came again, _rat-tat, rat-tat_ and it dawned on Jims that it couldn't be Mum or Cap, because they were still arguing, and anyway, they had said he could leave the table.

'All right,' said Jims reluctantly to the braid rug. He made no effort to leave his tent. The door creaked unsteadily open and a little voice said, 'Me come in?'

Seeing as Liam was already in the room, Jims supposed he meant the tent shelter, and held a corner aloft. Liam wormed his way under the blanket, and sort of burrowed against Jims's side. It wasn't terribly comfortable, because it was hot under the blanket with its Hudson Bay sunset, and so was Liam. But his little body felt terribly _small_ next to Jims, and sort of shivery. Jims uncrossed the pillow of his arms and got one around Liam, so that he was snugger than ever against Jims's side.

Liam said, 'They're casting Spare Gus on each other.'

Jims thought about this for a moment, trying to place who and what Spare Gus was. It dawned muzzily on him the little boy must mean _asparagus_ , only that couldn't be right; Jims couldn't picture anyone other than Liam daring to throw Madrun's asparagus around, except maybe Anthony. Certainly not Mum and Cap. On the other hand they were _definitely_ arguing, and presumably that expression came from somewhere. Jims hadn't realised before that it owed to some particularly vexed person throwing asparagus on someone else, that was all.

'I think grown-ups do that, sometimes,' he said to Liam.

Liam frowned up at him, face spattered with the Hudson Bay sunset. It made him look funny, like he'd had his face painted at the May Fair, but badly. 'But _why_?' he wanted to know. And then, while Jims was still working on an answer, 'The aunts never cast 'Spare Gus on each other.'

'Jims felt better qualified to deal with this last quandary, so tackled it first. 'I think maybe it's a Mums and Dads thing.'

'Oh,' said Liam, and nodded agreeably.

Jims's stomach was beginning to hurt with lying on the floor. So were his ribs. Only, they couldn't go back downstairs because of the asparagus casting. He had a half-constructed puzzle on the desk, but Liam tended to cram the pieces anywhere he fancied, and Jims loved him, but he didn't want him spoiling the puzzle. It had been a birthday gift from the Aunts, and he was determined to assemble it all himself.

The asparagus casting was getting louder.

'Jims?' said Liam with a tug at his arm. Jims hummed. Liam said, 'I don't want to be here. Can we not be here?' He sounded smaller even than Anthony. Jims sat up, hauling Liam with him. Tried to visualise where they could go, if not the blanket haven.

'Please?' said Liam. Now they were out from under the blanket, Jims could see just how wide his eyes were. They quite dwarfed the rest of his face.

'Yeah,' said Jims, and frowned. 'Yeah, we can. Let me…'

They needed to not be on Maple St. Only, the park was too far to get to, and anyway, this late in the day, someone would ask questions. If Gertrude Grant saw them, she'd want to know if they'd got Mum's permission, and Jims was much too tired to explain about how dire dinner had been, or the molasses atmosphere, or about the asparagus casting. He wasn't sure he _wanted_ to explain, anyway. Certainly not to severe Gertrude Grant. The university library would be closed, and so would the colleges. Jims was beginning to despair of ever coming up with a destination when inspiration struck in the form of the Aunts. George St wasn't all _that_ far by tram. They'd walk down to Sherbourne, and then it was only three stations to St George. With that sorted, Jims hauled Liam to his feet.

He said, 'Let's not bother them, all right? We'll just be extra quiet on the stairs.'

Liam nodded his understanding, while Jims fished around in trouser pockets for the fair for the train. A half fair for Liam, and a whole one for Jims, now that he was tall enough to look bigger than he was. That took a bit of effort, because Jims had recently put his savings towards a copy of Compton's _William the Conqueror_. He'd thought it would make a good birthday gift for Liam, something they could have Cap read to them. Now, for good measure, he stuck it awkwardly under his arm, eked out the last of the train money, and was halfway to the bedroom door when a thought struck him.

'Should we get Anthony?' Jims's stomach, already uncomfortably twisted, contorted tighter at the idea of leaving Anthony alone in the house. Well, not alone, exactly, but without him and Liam. Obviously Liam didn't like it either, because he nodded three times quickly and squeaked a very definite 'Yes.'

Well, that complicated things a bit. There was no way Liam could carry Anthony all the way to Sherbourne Station. Even if he could, he'd have to balance him on the tram, and walk down St George. There was Anthony's carriage, of course, but the trouble with that was that Sherbourne had steps. Awful, narrow steps that Jims would never be able to negotiate the carriage down. It would have to be the sling. Jims hoped he could reproduce all the complicated folds he'd seen Mum make when assembling it of an afternoon.

Jims touched a finger to his lips to make sure Liam understood they couldn't make noise, and then padded down the hall in his best impression of Mowgli in the jungle. Anthony was not in the nursery. Well, that made it trickier. Jims tiptoed downstairs, Liam behind him, and risked a peak around the dining room door. No one was there. Unless one counted the remains of Madrun's chicken and the melting Shape on the sideboard, which Jims didn't. No one was in the parlour, either. In the end, Jims found them in the sitting room, radio off – which was _not_ normal that time of night – Mum and Cap _still_ arguing. Casting Asparagus. Metaphorical asparagus obviously. Anthony was lying on his mat, idly sucking a cuddly carrot. Jims rapped a hand against the doorframe.

'I thought,' he said, ostensibly to the hulking mass of mute radio, 'Liam and Anthony and I could play outside for a bit. Is that…do you mind?'

No one said anything, which Jims took as not _not_ an answer. Certainly not a negation of his plan. In the adults' defence, he'd sort of stammered the idea out at a whisper in an effort to cause minimum disturbance. He scooped Anthony up off his mat clumsily, cuddly carrot and all, and walked with him to the hall, shifting him in his arms as he went. He was heavier than Jims had thought, and twice as awkward with Compton's _William_ still jostling under his right arm, but at least they could sit on the train. And Sherbourne wasn't all _that_ far.

The sling was trickier than Jims had expected. It had been lovingly rendered by Aunt Una, and it was full of cunning tucks and catches. Also, it was plainly designed for a much taller person, which made it difficult to fit snuggly against Jims. But he thought of those afternoons folding boats, waterlilies and mitres with the aunts, and that helped. With regret, Jims set _William the Conqueror_ on the hall table, resigned to his inability to carry book and brother. Anthony jammed his fingers into Jims's neck, Jims got Liam's hand in his, and they all of them stumbled out into the sunset. The real one, this time, not Hudson Bay.

Along Maple St, turn at the bridge, down Sherbourne, and don't stop to look into the ravine in case Anthony should fall out of the sling. Jims was very distrustful of the sling. It jostled as he walked, and cut awkwardly into his shoulders. At the corner of Bloor and Sherbourne Jims squinted into the fiery orange globe of a sun, and watched for a safe moment to dart across the road. He seized the first one that presented itself, Liam still in hand, jostling and weaving between carts and cars, sneezing at the overwhelming smell of petrol and horse comingling. Anthony lurched alarmingly, and that set him off wailing again, so Jims had to stop at the station entrance and try to settle him. Then it was down the stairs, and through the barriers, and onto the tram, with its glossy red and gold paint. A conductor _did_ ask where their mother was, so Jims made his eyes as wide and anxious as his insides felt and said, 'She's on the tram ahead of this one. We were going to catch it with her, but the door closed before we could,' because his back ached, his shoulders ached, his stomach hurt and he had run out of energy to explain about the asparagus casting and the disastrous dinner and how it had been hot under the Hudson Bay blanket with its multicoloured sunset. The conductor patted his shoulder sympathetically and waved them aboard.

'Jims,' hissed Liam as they settled onto a polished wood bench, 'Jims, that isn't…'

'I know,' said Jims hastily, before Liam could finish.

'But Jims, isn't that _sinful_?'

Jims thought about this. He squirmed in his seat, the better to reposition Anthony, whose feet were jammed uncomfortably against his ribs.

'I just…'he said, thoughtfully, 'I didn't think he'd understand about the asparagus.'

'Oh,' said Liam, and subsided. The tram gave an almighty jolt and lurched out of the station. It trundled drunkenly across the city, past St Paul's Cathedral with it's dome, past the Hudson's Bay Company, inventor of the woollen sunset, past the Museum in its Georgian splendour until finally, mercifully, they drew up in the St George terminus. They scrambled off the train, Jims shifting Anthony's weight in the process. The conductor reappeared with an offer to help find their mother, and Jims stammered something about how they were all supposed to be meeting up at his aunt's house, anyway.

'All right,' said the conductor, 'know where you're going, son?'

'Yes sir,' said Jims, and darted as best he could for the station exit, Anthony knocking uncomfortably into his chest as he went, Liam scuttling like a crab to keep up.

St George St was luxuriously quiet after the sunwarmed tram. Jims stood for a minute at the entrance to the station basking in the cool of the evening. The sun had only just set, leaving the sky murky and empurpled, and the street deep in evening noises. Boiled smells of cabbage, and rich ones of meat drifted out open windows, punctuated here and there by the symphonic rattle of dishes being scraped, washed and stacked. Occasionally an overzealous hydrangea escaped its moorings and knocked against their cumulative ankles, or a cluster of tiger lilies spilled over a fence and tickled Liam's neck.

Then they were at the aunts' building, the porter raising Jims a Scout's salute as he stood to attention by the door.

'Miss Ford's lads, aren't you?' he said, as he always said.

'Yes sir,' said Jims, because that was what _he_ always said.

'Hal,' said the porter with a grin, 'but you know that.'

Jims _did_ know. This was part of the ritual. He just hadn't yet plucked up the nerve to assimilate Hal the porter's name into his everyday vocabulary. With reassuring predictability, Hal said, 'I'll tell Miss Ford the cavalry has arrived.'

But then he bent over, and said, presumably of Anthony, 'His head's sorter lopsided. May I…' and gestured at Anthony in his sling.

'Sure,' said Jims, and allowed the porter to reposition baby and sling. It was _much_ more comfortable than the previous arrangement.

'Sorry,' he said, recovering from this aberration in their routine. 'Missus would never forgive me, see?' Then, as an afterthought, 'It's real nice work, that. The stitches and all. Your mother do it up?'

'No,' said Jims, 'an aunt.'

The porter – Hal – nodded, and ushered Jims and Liam through the door. It turned out the resident lift was stranded some floors up, and even with the newly resettled Anthony snug against Jims's shoulder, he was still too heavy to have around Jims's neck while they summoned it down. Why, they could be halfway up to the flat by the time the lift arrived! Jims knew this for a fact; he and Cap had once raced each other to test it. Cap had taken the lugubrious lift with it's iron grille, while Jims scrambled up the stairs in pell-mell fashion. Even winded and stumbling, Jims had been lolling lazily against the wall opposite the lift by the time it and Cap had deigned to put in an appearance.

Now, though, it was just him and Liam, with Anthony albatross-heavy against his chest, little fists curled tight into his collar. Up they went, onto the first landing, where Mrs Humenuik had obviously made _holopchi_ for dinner. Round the corner and up the stairs, past Mr. Hudson's flat, where the dog was decrying its latest grievance to the world. The third landing took them past the Poltens, whence emanated smells of sausage and sounds of squabbling children. Opposite them was Miss Henderson, who shared the bathroom with them, but otherwise lived alone and always kept the radio tuned to _The World Service_. Halfway up to the fourth floor, Liam tripped over an aggrieved tortoiseshell donut that gave an almighty yowl, before streaking down the stairs trailing offended dignity like a stole.

' _Hera!'_ said a vexed Liam, as he picked himself back up off the steps.

'All right?' came a voice overhead, even as Jims stopped to take stock of his brother. He'd managed to skin his palms, but it didn't _look_ bad, and there weren't any tears.

'Yes,' they chorused in the direction of overhead, but too late. Already Aunt Persis was descending the stairs, arms outstretched.

'You brought Anthony,' she said, sounding surprised, even as she extracted his person from Jims and the unwieldy sling. As an afterthought she added, 'Did your mother work the sling?'

'No,' said Jims for the second time that evening. 'I said to the porter – that was one of the aunts.'

'Well, so long as he doesn't think it was _me_ ,' said Aunt Persis. 'Otherwise he'll expect one of us do something like that for the new baby, and really…' She did not bother to finish the sentence. Apparently the hysterics the mere thought of her sewing – or Aunt Cass, for that matter – sent Jims and Liam into adequately accounted for the likelihood of this most unlikely of things.

In the flat Cass bustled forward to unburden Jims of the sling, while Persis settled Anthony in a cushion nest. Thereafter Cass got gauze for Liam's hands and Persis put a call through to Maple St confirming they'd arrived safely. Jims sat down on the carpet, mindful of myriad piles of outspread paper, tucked his feet under his knees, and let himself relax. He hadn't realised how tightly wound his internal clockwork was until he sat on the carpet and let it run down.

As ever, the gramophone was on, and something warm, lyric and melodious drifting out of it.

' _Thais,_ ' said Aunt Cass, dropping down beside him. 'Massenet. Lovely, isn't it?'

Jims said that it was. He knew nothing about music, and had discovered it was nigh impossible to keep up with Aunt Cass once she started on the subject in much detail. Still, it was nice to sit there, the music a sunbeam of sound, and let someone else talk. After the agony of dinner, this was blissful. Something about monks, Jims thought she said. A monk and a woman of uncertain morals, and in the middle of it, a luscious thing Aunt Cass called a meditation, all rippling harp strings like water and a broken-hearted violin.

'They were casting Spare Gus on each other,' Liam was saying to Aunt Persis on the other side of the room.

'Aspersions,' said Aunt Persis, evidently reflexively. So _that's_ what it was. Jims _knew_ Liam had had it wrong earlier.

'No,' said Liam, 'Spare Gus. Right, Jims?'

With difficulty Jims extricated himself from the music. _Thais_. Massenet. Lovely. Liam was looking at him with wide, hazel eyes.

'Yeah,' said Jims. 'Casting asparagus. Definitely.' He thought he caught Aunt Cass smiling. It wasn't funny, not really, the dinner, and the stress, and Liam's linguistic foibles, but somehow this fact of a shared joke between them made it _bearable_. Bearable was good. As if in testament to this, Liam's stomach growled. So did Jims's. The Aunts untangled themselves from the floor and drifted towards the kitchen, heads together in conference.

Jims got up to follow them, on the basis they'd eat in the kitchen.

 _'Mene_ ,' said Aunt Cass, and clucked for emphasis.

'Yes,' said Aunt Persis, 'you lot stay put.'

Jims thought about arguing. Instead he hauled down a battered dominoes set from the sideboard and held it out to Liam. They set it up gingerly among the amassed manuscripts and notes.

'Good thought,' said Aunt Persis returning with a tray. 'Mind if we join?' She knelt down, careful, because of the tray, and began handing round plates. Jims and Liam shifted to better accommodate the aunts, and for ease of access to the food. There was a wonderful, summery salad made of nothing but ripe tomato, olive oil, and a cheese so soft it melted in the mouth. There were olives, and crisp carrot sticks, warm bread and slivers of lamb that fell off the bone if you so much as looked at them. Asparagus did not feature.

'You'll have to forgive the pick-up supper,' said Aunt Cass. 'We'd have saved something if we'd realised you were coming by.'

Jims mumbled an apology, but it got waved away by a stray domino piece. Liam hastened to say the meal was _ambersill_ , which they supposed to be a corruption of _ambrosial_ , and that won more laughter. Anthony woke up, and was handed a bottle of sweet, hot milk. The music went on, and Jims thought he understood Cass to say that Thais died, but somehow even that was all right. They ended by losing dominos to a returned Hera, evidently still nursing her grievance from the stairwell mishap. She sat in the middle of the toppled dominos looking unlawfully pleased with herself, while Liam crawled into Persis's lap and from this shelter bevvied her with questions about the papers. That was how she came to be explaining kinship tables to Liam while Jims and Aunt Cass cleared away the dishes.

'Thanks,' he said when the last of them was stacked, gleaming on the draining board. He wasn't sure if he meant the music, the food, the bandages for Liam or just the fact of being able to ruck up on the doorstep with nary a word to anyone but Hal the porter in advance. Apparently it didn't matter. Cass got a golden arm around Jims's shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

'Always,' she said.


	16. Crow Lake

_For Kslchen, who wanted something cheerier. Sometimes, very, very occasionally, I comply. Though, actually, if there is anyone you want to hear about, drop me the odd line. I'm happy to take things on suggestion. In the meantime, thanks ever for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Nov., 1923

* * *

It was winter the year they came to Crow Lake. The snow was deep and the horse, an affectionate and child-tolerant creature by the incongruous name of _Lamia_ was reluctant. Nan heard this from the man who sold them the horse and wondered idly if there were also horses Melancholy, Indolence, Belle Dame Sans Merci, and so on. It made her smile in the face of the cold, this array of might-be Keatsean horses. The runners of the sleigh crunched and squeaked over a sea of white snow. There was, of course, absolutely no hope of propelling an automobile forward through the inclement weather. It was the end of the world, or at least the place that time forgot, and it was beautiful. Cold, snow-buried and deeply, achingly beautiful. Welcome to Crow Lake. Well, Nan supposed, they had to get there first.

But first they were to stop at Lea Rigg, home to Poppy and Peter, and not so many miles as the eponymous crow flew, from the lake in question. As it fell out Poppy must have spotted them from a window, because they had barely drawn abreast of Lea Rigg and its elegantly crafted sign when Poppy descended on them. She was pink-cheeked with cold and breathless with running.

'I thought it was you!' she said.

'Mouse, your fingers!' said Nan by way of reciprocating the greeting and promptly made a dive to encircle Poppy's diminutive hands with their infamously bad circulation. Her index fingers were already the tell-tale white as Nan rubbed them between hers.

'Stitch,' said a disembodied voice, 'is that them?'

Before Nan could pinpoint the speaker, Peter came limping around the side of the house as dark and handsome as he had ever been. He descended upon the sleeping babies at once, which freed Jerry to see to Lamia and, presumably, ensure she neither vanished, nor became a serpent, nor made any bargains with trickster gods.

'And they've brought us fairies,' Peter was saying positively nonchalantly when Nan emerged from her reverie. 'How lovely. I take it we have suitable food?' He began to walk up to the house, a baby on each arm.

'Define suitable,' said Poppy, even as Peter kept up the kind of steady patter that was both charming and entirely nonsensical. Nan could see this and approved heartily. So did Mandy; sh twitched dainty fists in the direction of Jerry force of habit but did not otherwise protest her seizure by a stranger.

'Come on,' said Poppy, tugging Nan into the house, 'Rock up ahead isn't actually wrong about getting out of the cold. Anyway, my hands hurt.'

Nan laughed. She leaned her glossy, nut-brown hair against Poppy's shoulder and said contentedly, 'I've missed this, Mouse.'

'Me too,' said Poppy. 'I've got a bone or three to pick with you and Ariel about all this traipsing around the globe. Why don't you stay put like normal people, the pair of you?'

She installed Nan comfortably at the kitchen table and began to clatter around with saucepans and kettles, murmuring all the while about fairy cakes, tea, and what an unkindness it was to serve this last without biscuits. Now and then she paused to wring out her whitened fingers, but the blood was slow returning to them. Unable to tackle the many pieces of this barrage at once Nan let it be known that the day she put words into Mara Blythe's mouth about anything was due to arrive several worlds after Never, which made Poppy laugh until her eyes watered.

'Sensible,' said Poppy. 'Anything less and she'd have your head for your trouble. I still don't have to _like_ it, though. One day Scotland's going to stick, you watch.' She produced iced gingerbread from a tin in poinsettia stamp with a flourish and said as an afterthought, 'Though all things being equal, you'll probably do the watching from the frozen north or something. How would you feel if I spun a web or six around Crow Lake and sort of held you hostage?'

It was Nan's turn to laugh. The kettle began to shriek, and Poppy turned to deal with it. This left Nan to scrutinise the amassed tea things. She held up a delicate square of sponge and said to the back of Poppy's dark head, 'Fairy cakes?'

'Well,' said Poppy, not turning round, 'worthy of fairies if not actual fairy cakes, which have a different consistency completely. We're not really cake people – but I did want something your girls could eat.'

'You,' said Nan, 'want to spoil them.'

'Of course I do,' said Poppy without apology and finished with her tea tray. 'Mara and Faith _won't_ on principle, and Di's not here, so I must.'

Nan reached across the table moved to pinch the back of Poppy's hand, ineffectually as it turned out. One well-aimed swat of her tea towel by Poppy was enough to offset Nan's aim, and she ended with her fingers in the Devon Cream. It was thick, yellow-crusted and rich smelling, a lovely, subtle compliment to the cardamom of Poppy's rising bread and the spice of the tea. It would be a shame to leave the kitchen.

They did, though, laughing and teasing and jockling so as to set the Spode Woodland chattering on its tray. It competed amicably with the little girls, who were racing precariously around the twig furniture of the sun room, stout young arms flapping. Jerry had come in by then and was stretched out in a battered but obviously well-beloved armchair, his legs a hurdle for his daughters to jump through. Peter sat opposite, his bad leg resting atop the good one, his back against the sofa.

'Half a minute, Sitch,' he said as As Poppy came in with the tray. And to the raucous imps in his sunroom, just as amicably, 'I think, Lady Sylph, we'll just put you where you can't be scalded, shall we?' He snared a wayward Miri under one arm as he said it.

Miri should by rights have voiced a protest or six, Nan thought. Instead, she let herself be cuddled against Peter's side and placated with one of the fairy cakes. Mandy, ever more tractable, scrambled into her father's lap on the termination of their hazardous round of Tig and nestled her red head against the crook of his arm.

'Your Peter,' said Nan as Poppy poured out, 'has got those girls bewitched. As long as you're holding us hostage, any chance of rostering him on to keep them perpetually malleable?'

'They malign you, fawn,' said Peter with mock hurt, as he stroked Miri's sleek brown hair. Jerry snorted.

'Don't you just, Angel,' he said to Nan, but he raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. 'Scheherazade over there,' and he nodded towards Miri, 'wouldn't know the fine art of negotiation if it poked her in the – admittedly aristocratic – nose.'

'Well no,' said Peter, 'because it would be going about it all wrong, wouldn't it, Miss Mab? Poking your lovely nose indeed! Though I like Scheherazade for her. Who coined that one?'

Three guesses,' said Jerry, 'as to which of us speaks literary allusions the way normal people do English.'

The fire crackled magnificently. Peter shook his head. To Nan he said, 'I'm still disappointed you never did write that essay on _Clarissa_ as discussed.'

'I had a word count to meet,' said Nan, but she smiled. Had it really been years ago she had threatened to sum up that long, overwrought book; _Clarissa dies a virtuous woman_? It felt like yesterday. The fire popped and snapped as little blisters of sap burst making the little girls jump. Poppy offered them a bag of corn kernels and they dove upon it, throwing handful after gleeful handful into the dancing, spiting flames. The fire popped more than ever. Outside it had begun to snow, but silently. Nan watched the whirls of white lace and nursed her tea. If this was a hostage-taking, she thought, she could graciously put up with it.

The children presently succumbed to sleep, sweets and the comfortable blaze of the fire, and were bedded down among good, stiff cushions and thick wool blankets. The adults, left to their own devices, began a tentative round of Whist, which Jerry only half-knew his way around, and Poppy knew only very slightly better.

'I'm surprised you know it,' she said to Nan. 'I always think of good, Presbyterian Ingleside eschewing cards.'

Nan shrugged. She said, 'It was always cropping up in my reading, wasn't it? Of course I learned to play the same things as Elinor Dashwood.'

'Of course you did,' said Jerry, and there was a ripple of laughter around the room. Mandy snuffled in her sleep, and Miri coiled protectively round her.

It continued to snow; now and then the wind snatched at it and whisked it into swirling white bridal lace. Or else it whistled and keened its way down the chimney so that the fire bellowed and snapped against it. Nan and Peter took it in turns to feed the fire. By the time they looked up from cards, or the little girls woke – Nan afterwards forgot which way round it was – the snow was deep and still falling, the light long reduced to mere squibs.

'Still amenable to hostage-taking?' asked Poppy. She said it with a smile, and Nan thought, _Later I must explain to Jerry_. Caught in the moment she squinted out at the deep, crepuscular landscape, all shadow and drifting snow like one of Jerry's paintings. _Winter Evening in North Ontario_ , she thought. Aloud she said, 'Is it a hostage-taking if we agree?'

'You're the one with a gift for words, Catkin,' said Poppy. 'You tell us.'

Nan batted at her playfully. Then she went to help make up the spare room. It was a little afterthought of a room, for which Poppy's everlasting apology, but Nan loved it at once. The ceiling sloped invitingly towards the floor at great, steep angles and was full of notches and knots that spoke of a storied past. And it smelled wonderfully of cloves and beeswax.

'I shouldn't worry,' said Nan in the face of the nth apology. 'We have good luck with garrets, Jerry and I.'

When they regained the sitting room the fire had been rekindled and the little girls were wrestling gamely with Peter. He had Mandy 'round his neck, and Miri hanging off one arm, while Jerry looked on placidly, as if mentally filing the scene away for drawing later. They were jabbering pure twinnish while Peter jabbered right back. Poppy shot Nan a look that said all too clearly _is this all right? Is Jerry all right_. On cue Jerry joined in the communal round of gibberish and Nan inclined her head in reassurance. _All well_ , her silent answer. She followed Poppy into the kitchen and while Poppy prepared meat, Nan diced potatoes with half a thought for her next _Lord Harrington_. It was going to be set, she decided with a glance out the window and an ear for her chattering, tumbling children, in the depths of a snowstorm.

Jerry did sketch Peter and the girls later. Nan woke up late to find the wick of a nearby lamp burning low and the sussuration of one of Jerry's pencils rustling in the dark. She leaned over to see it better, and there they were, resident imps of the house of Meredith, Peter at their centre, a laughing, tussling triad. Jerry finished with it, dated it and set it on the dresser by way of an indirect thank you. The snow kept falling. The cold deepened. The sun came up and the snow went on falling. Nan sat opposite Poppy as she set her bread and launched into the form of their old economies, _What I wish for most in the world…_ Poppy beamed at her. They were interrupted by the girls running skip-change into the room with what Poppy made enviable turn-out. Nan hadn't even noticed they did it.

They clamoured for biscuits and it was all Poppy could do to find an appropriate delicacy.

'Do they ever come down off their toes?' asked Poppy, arcing Mandy up off the ground and into her arms. Mandy clapped her hands and Poppy handed over a fine, buttery shortbread finger.

'Chance would be a fine thing,' said Nan.

There was still no hope of leaving Lea Rigg, but no one seemed to mind. Lamia got on with the other horses, and the little girls were revelling in the adoration of Poppy and Peter. Jerry went off to sketch and then to pain the surrounding landscape, rendering the wash of snow in everything from the slow-bleeding pinks of sunrise to the darkling purples and bruised blues of a four o'clock sunset. It was bitterly cold, of course, but there were blankets, good fires and better company. Snow drifted and swirled; Nan began to write up _Harrington_ , occasionally reading snatches to Poppy, Peter and the children if they were on hand. They weren't always; Mandythought nothing of trekking after Jerry through the snow though it was quite as tall as she was and made her unsteadier than ever. Often she fell down in the drifts wheeling and squealing like an over-wintering seagull until Jerry capitulated and took her on his shoulders. Or Miri might fall backwards into a snowbank, Mandy following, and in great puffs of white they would create snow-angels until they were soaked through and in need of baths. This was a job various devoted adults took in turn, but invariably came away from sopping wet, often laughing.

'Little Naiads,' Peter called them, laughing and struggling to dry the ends of Mandy's red hair. It fell wet and gleaming down her back as she wove around the furniture in a frantic bid to elude the snare of a towel.

'Selkies, surely,' said Nan. Peter nodded approval of this judgement.

'If they are,' said Poppy, 'you keep a tight hold on their skins. They'd be missed if they up and vanished on us.' She got half a hold of Mandy as she said it, but not tight enough and the would-be selkie was off again, squealing irascible triumph. The snow kept on falling.

Some days into their stay Jerry scrambled up on to the roof and hefted great clouts of snow off of it, because Peter was ill-equipped to do that sort of thing, and anyway, there was no one nearer. He did it to the outbuildings too, the little girls watching with round, wide eyes. Mandy declared a resolution to take up climbing, and Peter revised his assessment; they were dryads, the little girls, after all.

'They're pucks,' said Jerry laconically, 'and that's a fact.' It was difficult to argue with him, Nan thought, but the others gave it a fair try.

The snow settled finally, silent and deep as a blanket. Nan replenished the fire, eyed the wood pile and trusted there were further supplies somewhere. No one, least of all Poppy and Peter would have headed into a winter like this under-prepared. Someone took a picture of her there by the fluctuating firelight, hands full of wood, the thick corduroy of her skirt, and Jerry afterwards coloured it in by hand. It was lovely. Charmed, even. They were cocooned in snow, and it was almost like slipping back in time to the days of Nan's economies, Applewood fires, and later the frantic bustle of Mara's Halifax family.

But Lea Rigg wasn't Halifax, so when Nan came into the kitchen to find Poppy sorting cautiously through her pantry, Nan felt her stomach twist. It was still snowing, and still too deep to travel, but Nan didn't need to have read mathematics to appreciate that it was a leap to jump overnight from feeding not two but six people.

'How can I help?' said Nan, watching.

Poppy shook her head. 'The perils of unanticipated hostage-taking,' she said and smiled wryly. 'Never mind Catkin, we'll muddle through.'

'No,' said Nan with a kiss for Poppy's cheek. 'We should think about leaving. We should have done it ages ago, Mouse. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' Poppy said, and pulled Nan into a hug there by the pantry. She smelled of yeast, flour and cardamom. Nan was glad that Crow Lake was not so far as all that.

'And of course,' said Poppy, 'we'll see you as often as we can manage.'

'We wouldn't have it any other way. The little girls will be sorry to lose their courtiers.'

Poppy snorted. 'Fairies,' said Poppy. 'If they're ordinary girls, I'm a Dutchman.' She laughed her wonderful, ruddy laugh and again there was that timeslip feeling of stepping backwards again. They were in Swallowgate with its imperfect oven, Poppy's bread rising on the scrubbed pine table. In a minute Pilgrim would wreak some domestic devastation and answer for it.

Said Poppy as an afterthought, 'it's a reciprocal sentiment. We'll miss you, too. Not just because of your sprites, either.'

They chose a clear day to set out. The air smelled cold and crisp, and it made their breath form fine, misty clouds on the air. Peter and Jerry had done what they could to shovel out the front of the house and a little up the road, but it wasn't much. Now and then sun sent gouts of snow sloping off trees and onto the ground where it flowed seamlessly into the drifts. Lamia whickered uncertainty at navigating through the cold feather-down of the landscape, but Poppy charmed her into her place at the helm of the sleigh. Peter got out a wagon and arranged to go part of the way with them by snowshoe, because, as he said, there were things he'd need in the town anyway.

'You're just reluctant to leave your wee elven queens,' said Poppy. 'I consider myself thoroughly displaced.'

'Never Stitch,' said Peter, with a kiss for her cold, white fingers.

'It won't be for long,' said Nan.

'No,' Jerry said. 'There's Christmas coming, remember. They,' he nodded at the little girls, swaddled and blanketed within an inch of their little lives, 'will never let us forget it if we don't reconnect with you for that at least.'

'I should think not,' said Poppy.

The snow did not crunch this time; it did not so much as squeak. The sleigh slipped mute through the vast white sea of snowfall, and they were off to Crow Lake at last. It was heavy, slow-gong work, and Nan pulled her girls close for warmth in the face of the exposed landscape. Peter kept steady pace with them, snowshoes schluffing through the white velvet lace of the snow. At the crossroads that parted them, Peter pointed the way with one great, beaver-lined mitt. Nan cradled her daughters to her and followed his finger norward to where a cardinal winged like a lone scarlet streamer, and the crows called out a welcome. If she squinted, Nan could just make out the shadow of the lake, it's outline against the bruise of the conifers. It was the end of the world. The place time forgot. Cold, snow-buried and deeply, achingly beautiful. And for a little while, Nan thought, Miri and Mandy burrowed under one maternal arm apiece, it would be home. Crow Lake at last. She raised Peter a final salute and the last sound as they pulled out of sight was his 'Haste ye back!' arm waving madly.


	17. Proudfoot

_Content warning - post traumatic stress._

 _You were meant to have this on Monday, but then the world over here ground to a spectacular halt, so here it is a bit early. Thanks always to all of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Crow Lake, 1925

* * *

Nan could picture how it began. Mandy lying flat on her stomach, chin pillowed on her hands staring out over one of Crow Lake's many ponds. She would be lying there watching as the exhalation of her breath ruffled the water, breaking the surface tension and sending ripple after ripple radiating outward. And opposite her, padding delicate among the long grasses, the cat on her outsized, kittenish paws. Perhaps she swatted at a dragonfly with glittering wings. Mandy would watch her, perhaps explaining the variety of wingspans the victimised dragonfly might have, perhaps not.

Or maybe the cat too was perfectly still, and they would be kindred spirits; two perfectly still creatures in a gently ruffled world. Mandy flat on her stomach scrutinising the pond, and the cat opposite, magnificent and tawny, attempting a camouflage there in the long grasses on the far side of the water.

The ending was always the same; Mandy straggling upright trying ineffectually to brush grass from her knees, not realising there were more blades on her hands. Her fingers black with the wet soil of the pond. And the cat loping towards her on paws it had not yet grown into, pink nose nuzzling the exposed flesh of her ankle, snuffling at the clay on a slipped ankle sock. Mandy crouching on the balls of her toes, and offering her fingers in greeting.

When Nan found Mandy and the cat, it was sitting perfectly still atop Mandy's head, and Mandy, beneath her, ramrod-straight as she sat ankles folded under knees folded under torso.

'Usually,' Nan opened her mouth to say, 'people balance a book on their head to refine their posture.' She did not say it, because Mandy, sensing her footfall, pressed a finger to her lips. Then, shifting, but carefully because of the cat, stretched her finger outward so that she was pointing at a fractious tableau of fawn and doe, the one nuzzling the other. So Nan stood statuesque, too, but even so the cat on Mandy's head sensed her presence and stretched so that she set a long tawny paw gingerly on Mandy's shoulder. Then another one, and another until she was sitting on Mandy's shoulder. Mandy never flinched. The cat walked down her extended arm as a balancing beam, bunting over it at the last and sticking her landing in Mandy's lap, where she thrust a wet, pink nose under Mandy's slender armpit.

Nan could picture that beginning now too, could picture how the cat had got atop Mandy's head in the first place. She mentally reconstructed the sequence backwards as the fawn and its mother ambled off into the middle distance. Saw in her mind's eye the cat leaping from lap to arm to shoulder to head.

'Can we keep her, Mums?' asked Mandy, and scratched diligently at the tawny ears.

Miri did not like the cat. Probably because they had never been an animal household. They never stayed anywhere long enough. Animals were, Nan had reflected once, boxing up their home in the Kippewa, more awkward to move even than books. Just _try_ getting a dog into a canoe, never mind a cat. Other households had them, Nan knew; there was Dog Tuesday at Larkrise, Pilgrim the cat still at Fox Corner, loyal even now to an ostensibly reluctant Mara. Una and Carl wrote of a veritable menagerie, and, of course, Rilla had always had her cats growing up, Jem his dogs.

But Nan had no way of knowing this that afternoon when she watched the cat sitting on Mandy's head as Mandy sat by the edge of the pond. She could not have anticipated that Miri would not like the cat.

Nan said, 'Of course we can, Dryad.' Said it softly amidst the springtime verdure of Crow Lake. Nan thought that but for the cat, Mandy might have leapt up and hugged her. Instead she tilted her head backwards and smiled. _Thanks Mums_ , mute on the wing in the quiet of the day.

The cat sang. Well, Mandy said the cat sang. Mandy had never actually heard it, because she waited until Mandy was asleep before beginning. This also might have accounted for Miri's dislike of their new houseguest. It sat at the foot of Mandy's bed, there on the apple leaf quilt and let it be known to the world that it's love had abandoned it and the world was woe. This was how Nan came to find Jerry in the kitchen, hands over his ears in the dark hour before dawn.

'It's only the cat,' she said. 'Proudfoot, Mandy calls her, because she's got extra claws.' Nan had not seen them, but thought Mandy would know. Nan imagined they were pink, the pads of Proudfoot's paws, like her nose.

Jerry sat at the kitchen table, his hands over his ears and grimaced. Tentatively, Nan put out a hand towards him.

'May I?' she said and when he nodded, fractionally, infinitesimally, she rubbed his back as if he were one of their babies after a nightmare. Sketched slow circles with the pads of her fingers, until he leaned against her, closed his eyes, and ceased to moan.

'She'll grow out of it,' said Nan. She did not know if she meant Mandy or the cat. Possibly both.

Poppy came to visit now the snow was gone and the days were long. Jerry went off with his paints, and Miri set up at the kitchen table armed with a stiff ream of paper and a pen for writing with. _Wanted_ , Nan imagined Miri writing in childish script; _One home for singing cat._ Nan and Poppy sat in the garden, which smelled of wet earth and blossom, taking their tea in the borrowed china of the Crow Lake house and watched Mandy and her familiar – because this was really what it was, Nan thought – slipping away through the long grass. At what it judged a safe distance away, the cat leapt up onto her bony shoulder and sat there vigilant.

Poppy laughed. 'She's bewitched,' she said.

'Mandy or the cat?' Nan asked. Poppy didn't know.

'But,' she said, 'it's Pilgrim and Ariel all over again, only with tabby stripes.'

'I thought that too,' said Nan, and smiled. It hurt a bit, because she missed Swallowgate, the days when their most pressing grievance was Mara's griping over Pilgrim the interloping feline whose presence Mouse had sanctioned. At Swallowgate no one had woken up sobbing because of the cat. Not even after he was a permanent feature and Mara's second shadow.

'I wonder sometimes,' Nan said now, in the rustling green afternoon, 'if Ariel got to Mandy that year we were at Kingsport and so worried about Miri. You know, put a hand on her forehead and passed on whatever peculiarity of hers it was that put Mara feet so firmly half in elsewhere.' The afternoon still smelled of wet earth and blossom. A bird – a sparrow? – began to sing. Then again, it might only have been Mandy whistling.

'In a list of all the world's most unlikely things,' said Poppy, 'I rate that fairly high for probability. Above another epic war, for instance, or Doomsday arriving tomorrow.'

'Aren't those the same thing?' said Nan, thinking of Jerry and how he woke up stricken, nights, because of the cat singing to a sleeping Mandy. Because of some peculiar feline lullaby. Poppy reached across the borrowed tea service and pressed her hand.

'Probably, Catkin,' she said.

Summer came to Crow Lake. The cat did not stop singing. The sun climbed high, the cicadas buzzed with heat, and the little girls risked paddling in the ponds. Afterwards, Mandy lay flat on her back watching for water-life and the cat lay on Mandy's back. Badgers dug nearby; Jerry painted them onto cards Nan sent to Ingleside. _All well – thinking of you. Little girls thriving._ There was more, but she wrote the rest into longer letters to her own Mums, about Mandy, the cat, and how it was beginning to tell on Jerry. _I don't know what to do, Mums_.

The moon was high and the kitchen flooded with its bright, white light. The air rippled with unshed moisture. Heat notwithstanding Nan put a pot of milk on the hob and listened to it bubbling. She plucked the skin off force of habit before offering the mug to a clammy Jerry. His eyes were bright and white as the moonlight.

'If it doesn't stop,' he said, 'I will kill that cat.'

'I know,' said Nan, and dug her fingers gently into his shoulders, feeling the tension bubbling under the surface. He had not said it the way Susan would have done, exasperated but inexpensively. He didn't even say it as Mara would have done in the early days of Pilgrim, careless and arch. He said it perfectly flatly, without heat or ire. Said it with sincerity, so that Nan knew that if the cat did not stop singing, Jerry would indeed kill the cat.

He meant it about Proudfoot with her unusual multiplicity of claws. An owl screeched nearby, and Jerry winced, milk slopping out of his mug and over his hands.

'Never mind,' said Nan. She sat down beside him and blotted up the overflow with the sleeve of her nightdress.

'If it doesn't stop,' said Jerry again, 'I will kill that cat.'

Nan smoothed his forehead and felt a pang for him, another for her sleeping daughter. She felt impossibly poised between them, because Mandy loved the cat and the cat was unravelling Jerry. 'I know,' she said. He fell asleep with his head pillowed against her shoulder, still shaking, there at the kitchen table. Nan sat there, immobilised and listened to the cat singing to Mandy. Mentally she began to draft another letter to Mums. _I do not know what to do_ …But she did not say that Jerry would kill the cat. Some things were not for popular consumption.

The crickets warbled up the scale to the F above High C. They did not actually hum, to hear Mandy tell it, but rubbed their wings together. She said this over a dinner of fried fish prepared over a birch-fire. The fish tasted of smoke and made Nan think of Swallowgate, and also of Rainbow Valley. Poppy was visiting, and Peter with her. He and Jerry had gone sloping off into the woods 'to mine quiet' as Peter had put it, with apology to the little girls. Peter adored the little girls, never mind the cat that might have bewitched Mandy, or perhaps the other way around.

Presently they scarpered to, the girls and the cat, the fire burning low. Nan fed it stray scraps of birchbark, and watched Poppy's fingers trailing purposefully through the grass. She supposed Poppy too was mining for elfwort to throw on the fire. What had Mara said its real name was, all those years ago? Helen's Tears?

'That's it,' said Poppy. She had not found any elfwort. Nan threw sugar on the flames instead and they leapt, green and crackling to the delight of the nearby children. Poppy said, 'Peter can't believe how much she knows about nature, you know. He says Mandy picked out the wood her fishing rod was made from this afternoon just from looking at it. From the grain.'

'Mandy would,' said Nan. 'I never can keep her indoors. What was it, anyway? The fishing rod?'

'Ash, apparently. I wouldn't have known.'

'Nor would I,' said Nan. 'But Mandy learns her loves – and she loves trees. I did too, of course. Climbed them, daydreamed beneath them, read in them and all sorts. I might even have made them courtiers, once, in long-ago years. But Mandy…'Nan trailed off. She shrugged. It was different with Mandy. Poppy nodded. They traded smiles across the fire and it was like those Swallowgate days come back to life; sometimes there was no need for words.

'Jerry,' said Nan, suddenly, not meaning to, 'is going to kill that cat.' She didn't say it with any particular heat. She said it exactly as he had done by the light of the moon, the spilled milk from his mug on his hands; flatly, without ire. A statement of fact.

Opposite her, Poppy's mouth worked. Nan watched her in the orangey-red play of the firelight. Watched her sort through and dismiss verbal rejoinders. _He mustn't_ was too obvious. _Mandy loves that cat_ was unhelpful.

'What will you do?' asked Poppy, the firelight coruscating across her face. And Nan, poised between people she loved, shook her head. Mandy adored the cat. Jerry could not live with the cat. The cat adored Mandy. Jerry would kill the cat.

'I haven't got that far,' said Nan.

'Give her to us,' said Poppy. Nan blinked. The crickets hummed nearby; they were only at the D above C tonight. It couldn't be that easy. She watched as a shadowy Proudfoot pounced on an unsuspecting frog. It broke off mid-croak, and Mandy dropped down next to her pet, fiery hair a meteor-bright in the late summer twilight.

'Peter loves her anyway,' said Poppy. 'The cat, I mean. Mandy too, but you knew that.'

Nan, who did know this, nodded.

'He probably partly loves the cat,' Poppy said, not letting up, ' _because_ Mandy does. And it gives us an excuse to have her down to the camp some summer. There's not just the horses, you know, though everyone remembers the horses. It's canoeing and nature and all sorts. She'd be ten thousand leagues ahead of the others, probably.'

'Almost certainly,' said Nan, and smiled. Jerry would not kill the cat after all. He would not sit up late and stricken in the rented kitchen because of the cat's love for their resident dryad. The fire began to smoke. It had burned too low and now the air was pleasantly acrid, the smoke smell mixing with the heady summer blossoms; tiger lilies, hydrangeas, and other things that probably Mandy could name but Nan only knew as flowers.

'She's called Proudfoot, isn't she?' said Poppy.

'Yes,' said Nan. She tried to stoke the fire, but the log she fed it was green, and so the smoke redoubled, but smelled now of burning life, sharp and tart.

So the cat, Proudfoot, went to Lea Rigg with its stables, where Peter and Poppy could cosset it. They were, after all, an animal household as Nan's Wandering Merediths never had been. Jerry's plans to move onwards to the St Lawrence, to paint the river and its environs, began to be realised. Nan began to pack, and Miri to help her. Mandy wended her way to Lea Rigg, spending long hours there, the cat on her shoulder.

'We can't tell if you're visiting us, Queen Dryad, or Proudfoot,' said Peter. He affected to be hurt, Nan noticed, but it was a poor performance. Mandy tossed her red head loftily, eyes laughing. Her hair was loose and the cat made a bid for it as it swished within reach. Nan thought they would probably never play like this again, unless – or even if? – they came back to Crow Lake.

Mandy said, 'Both of you, Uncle Peter,' as if this were supremely obvious, and let him tickle her ribs, squealing and shrieking until Proudfoot pounced on Peter's defiant, errant hands. They came up slashed and spattered red.

'Serves me right,' Peter said.

Nan thought of the trunks she was packing, the possessions she was condensing, and wished there was a way to pack this too. This scene at Lea Rig, Mandy's russet hair streaming in the sunlight, Proudfoot poised delicately on her shoulder, and Peter with his gouged hands held up in supplication. And in the midst of it all, Poppy serene, with Miri against her side, Jerry across the garden sketching the tableau, adults, girls, cat and the house in the background. Nan offered Poppy a smile. _This is good_ , it read.

Aloud she said, 'I wish we could go on like this, always.'

'I shouldn't worry,' said Poppy. 'There will always be a place here for your Elvin queens. No one quicker to pay fealty to them, either.' And Poppy smiled at her, at Peter, at the cat on Mandy's shoulder with its surplus of claws. _Polydactylism_ that was called, as per Shirley's letter from Fox Corner.

Peter began to bribe the little girls with sweets. The cat climbed onto Mandy's head and sat there in imitation of the Egyptian God its far-off ancestor had surely been. Jerry went on sketching, almost smiling. The cat did not sing; there was no need.

'Haste ye back,' said Poppy, with a kiss for Nan's cheek over the crescendo of the children's exuberance. It was an impossible promise to make, but Nan made it anyway, meaning it. Surely, some far off tomorrow would take them back to this place. Until then, Jerry was healthy, the girls were happy, and the cat was not dead.


	18. Verbum Dat Lucem

_With thanks, always for reading and/or reviewing. Here's a lighter update for you. I'd say we've all earned one!_

* * *

May, 1927

* * *

Jims Anderson disembarked at the corner of St George and threaded his way through a veritable zoo of people. It had felt like heaven when the school bell had finally sounded for the day, and as such the perfect occasion to call in on the aunts. Now, as he ducked and wove through the unconcerned legs of so many sunstruck adults, he was beginning to regret not staying inside and plumping for something suitably indoorsy. Maybe inventing a nice machine with lots of cogs and whirligigs that could reliably transport him from school to home without coming into contact with the blistering heat. Now _that_ sounded heavenly.

He was beginning to despair of ever reaching his destination when Hal, the omnipresent porter hailed him at the door to the St George flat.

'Visiting your Aunts?' he asked, beaming sunnily at Jims. Too sunnily, Jims thought, given the weather and the equally omnipresent layers of suit that came with Hal's person. One couldn't say such things though, so Jims nodded, and then was dismayed, betrayed and demoralised when Hal came back with the disheartening repartee that 'You've just missed them. Poking around in some musty book or other, if you want my opinion.'

One _also_ couldn't say that one did _not_ want Hal's opinion; years at the knees of the fearsome triumvirate of Mum, Grandmother Leslie and the awe-inspiring housekeeper Madrun had successfully instilled this much worldly knowledge at least in Jims. He contented himself with a nod, even as his spirits plummeted to somewhere around shoe level, there to be trammelled on by the likes of the sunstruck zoo of adults.

'Thanks,' he said to Hal, and raised him a boy scout's salute for form's sake. Then it was out the gate, back down St George Street, and through the roiling masses to the Aunts' college. Supposing they were in college and not the great university library. If the Law of Contraries kept on at the rate it was going, they _would_ be at the library but only if Jims didn't go there directly. Otherwise they would be at the college after all. It was turning out to be that kind of day.

Somewhere between St George and Knox College, though, God remembered Jims, or the Law of Contraries forgot him, because the Knox Porter waved him through with a jovial, 'I'll let you in to the library, shall I?'

That boded well. Jims supressed the impulse to hug ruddy-faced, sun-baked Chalmers the Porter. Hal wouldn't have minded, but it wouldn't _do_ in the hallowed grounds of Knox college, and Jims knew as much.

'Second storey?' he asked, trotting to keep pace with Chalmers.

'Usual floor,' said Chalmers. Jims nodded dutifully.

'Thanks,' he said as the great doors swung open. It was blissfully cool in the library. Jims lingered in the stairwell the better to savour it. Particles of dust drifted like lazy diamonds through the air, irradiated against the massive windows. Jims hugged the banister and thought idly that they weren't all that Presbyterian as windows went, at least, not if you learned Presbyterianism from Susan Baker, who mixed it with two parts severity and one part Total Solemnity. These windows were...well, they weren't severe or solemn. Entirely too big and declamatory. Still, it was soothingly cool on the stair, all stone and silence, like a gigantic cold room, or maybe a tomb, or one of Aunt Cass's cathedrals. She had promised Jims a trip to see one soon, but not today. Today was too hot, and there were too many people _doing_ things between here and the assorted Toronto Cathedrals.

Slowly Jims climbed the stairs. They were categorically not designed for young legs. Jims wrapped his arms around the bannister and used it to heft himself over the deep-set steps. One storey, two. Then a massive door that required a tremendous push from Jims. It swung thinly open and he skimmed through the narrow opening and stood blinking in the dim light of the library.

Everything was encased in hush. _Definitely_ tomb-like, Jims decided, and made a mental note to revisit the ones at the museum on the next suitably rainy afternoon. Even his shoes failed to squeak; the carpet swallowed any sound they might have made as Jims picked his way through sombre tables and vast bookshelves to what Chalmers would no doubt have called 'The usual place.'

Sure enough, there was Aunt Persis, golden head bent practically double over something that defied reading at a distance, her head nigh on level with Cass's darker one. The table was adrift in scads of loose paper, and between them was a sea of little index cards marked up in what Jims made another alphabet entirely. Aunt Cass appeared to be mining it for gold and Jims picked a card up warily. It whickered a bit against the wood of the table, which was evidently too much noise by half, because both heads shot up directly. But no reprimand was forthcoming.

'Jims,' said Aunt Persis in an undertone, surprised but seemingly not put out.

'Jims,' echoed Aunt Cass, and table notwithstanding, snared him awkwardly into a hug as best she could. She smelled of sun and mustiness, of forget-me-not, and vaguely of ink. Jims blamed the sea of paper.

There followed a silence in which it donned on Jims that they could not visit here in the library, and similarly that he was disrupting them at work.

'Sorry,' he said, scuffing his shoes against the forest of carpet. 'I should have arranged ahead.'

'Not at all,' said Cass, waving Jims into a chair that was too tall, too wooden and too high backed to be comfortable, but into which he nevertheless dropped.

'Nonsense,' said Persis. And then, as if in proof of this, 'There's only so much more of this I can read today, anyway. Shall we wrap up this chapter and then make an excursion?'

Aunt Cass murmured assent. 'It's Appleby's notes,' she said. 'I can't decide if he failed the course on legibility, or never attended in the first place.'

'That's all right,' said Aunt Persis. 'It's his theory on tribal inheritance that doesn't add up. Here – '

There was a rustle as she shuffled papers into a haphazard order and handed them in a packet to Cass across the table. It struck Jims that they lingered over the exchange fractionally longer than was necessary, and Jims's stomach flipflopped unaccountably. It was silly, but he had the distinct impression he was trespassing on a private conversation, and he shrunk down into his chair in an effort not to intrude. Mum and Cap had used to do things like that, he thought, though not so much lately. This brought another uncomfortable somersault to Jim's stomach, and there being nowhere further to shrink into the chair ,he hefted one of the larger books towards him out of the amassed pile, the better to detract from such complicated things as aunts and parents. Besides, he reassured himself as he got to grips with the book, you couldn't be anything other than perfectly ordinary and uncomplicated when discussing things like Dr Appleby's legibility and his theory on Tribal Inheritance. Surely. Not, naturally, that Jims had the least idea what Tribal Inheritance was.

The book was thick, which gave Jims ample yellowed pages to thumb absently through. There were brown spots dotting the corners – _foxing_ Grandfather Owen would call it, though Jims couldn't for the life of him see how or where foxes came into it. Jims thought all this as words about kinship and rites and rituals glanced off his eyes but failed to connect with his brain. How the aunts could lose _hours_ to this stuff was beyond him. He shifted in his seat, the better to squint at the words on kinship. They had traded papers now, and had resumed their work. Jims knew this because he risked a glance away from the interminable text in front of him. He was almost sorry about it – they had looked so at ease before, so _comfortable_. It was nice. Indeed, everything was nice. The cool of the library, the smooth grain of the table, even this impossibly high-backed, ill-fitting chair. _Definitely_ the company, Jims thought, with an oblique wish that everyone had aunts this pleasant and another peak up from the interminable paragraph on kinship.

The words on the yellowy page still made no sense. In fact, Jims was tolerabley sure he had got stuck on the same unlikely sentence and had been for some minutes. It was like school, but worse because it was if possible even _duller._ Only he mustn't say so, bcause the aunts so enjoyed their work…

Aunt Persis's hand brushed a sandy curl out of his eyes, occasioning a reprieve. Jims could tell it was her without looking up because of the blue of her sleeve. It was her particular colour. Aunt Cass's was red. Jims did not recall when he had processed this, only that it had wormed its way into his consciousness somewhere along the line. Aunt Persis was blue like the PEI water, and Aunt Cass wore the cherry reds of blood roses and pomegranates.

'I'm afraid you aren't finding that terribly interesting,' said Aunt Persis, still in an undertone. 'Why don't you run along and find something that suits?'

Jims did not argue. He slid off his chair in relief and made a beeline for the bookshelves. He felt mildly disgruntled at having betrayed the aunts through disinterest, but the feeling soon dissipated in the sight of the bookshelves. Why, there were _miles_ of them! And there were books on _everything_. Leather-bound books, and books with long, improbable names, short squat books, great fat bricks of books, books on numbers and still more books on kinship tables. Jims wondered if perhaps the Aunts had missed them, then decided that no, they were too clever for that. There was even, he saw, a copy of Grandfather Owen's _Life Book_ lying neglected on a nearby table. Jims did not pick it up. Between the outing to the library and sitting down at the table with the aunts, he felt entirely too grown-up for a book the Cap had read him at bygone bedtimes.

* * *

He was deep in a glorious, new-smelling text with complex diagrams of gears and cogs when he smelled must, forget-me-not and ink.

'Rather you than me,' said a voice over his shoulder, and Jims looked up, dazed, to find Aunt Cass's dark eyes sparkling down at him. She held out a hand and Jims took it as he scrambled to his feet. Then she folded Jims's arm under hers, just the way Mum did with Cap, and Jims felt terribly grown-up indeed walking back to the usual place with the sea of index cards and reams of scattered paper.

Only they weren't scattered and the sea was dried up, because Aunt Persis was shuffling and shifting things into worn leather folders, and stuffing still other things into envelopes. She handed Jims an ink bottle and said, 'Mind doing the cap for me? I never get it tight enough, and then there's always such a mess to clear up afterwards.'

Jims grinned and set about the business of screwing the cap in place. Aunt Cass said around papers of her own, 'What are your thoughts on ices? We were thinking it might be the day for them.'

Jims' grin stretched involuntarily wider.

' _Please_ ,' he said, fractionally more audibly than was perhaps desirable, or indeed warranted by the offer. He flushed hot in the cool of the library, suddenly a mere schoolboy again. It was horrible. But then Aunt Persis had got his arm in hers and said at perfectly ordinary volume, 'Excellent. Onwards we go then,' and somehow it mattered less.

'Sorry,' said Jims later, under the blissful shade of an oak. He was nursing a strawberry ice and sandwiched companionably between the aunts, so that all was right with the world.

'Sorry?' repeated both aunts in what Jims made perplexed unison.

'Not about turning up unannounced, surely?' said Aunt Persis.

Jims squirmed uncomfortably, suddenly acutely aware of the stickiness of the melting strawberry ice and hastened to explain that no, it was not about the spontaneous visit to Knox.

'I've done that lotses,' he said. 'Lots, even' he amended around a mouthful of ice. 'I know you don't mind. Or at least,' with a grin to rival the Cheshire Cat, 'you're awful good at pretending you don't mind. I meant – ' but further explanation was rendered impossible as two sets of hands fell upon him and, for his heretical declaration, commenced to tickle him mercilessly. Their fingers were cold from the ice, and Cass particularly was partial to skittering her hands across his neck. There was nothing for it but to shriek a breathless recantation.

'He was saying something,' said Aunt Persis, abating.

'Something sensible, I hope,' said Aunt Cass, her fingers hovering inches from Jims' ears amd twitching to terrifying effect. Jims supressed a further spasm of giggles.

'About the book,' he said once he had got his breath back. 'Not finding it interesting, I mean. I know it's important to you.'

'Well, yes,' said Aunt Persis, even as Cass's fingers loomed incrementally closer to Jims' vulnerable person. 'To _us_. Not to you. No reason it should be.'

'But,' said Jims, 'it's what people do, isn't it? Care about the things the people they care about like? That's what Madrun says.' This last statement with great conviction.

There was another of those moments in which the aunts appeared to forget Jims, this time in favour of a whole conversation apparently without words. Jims concentrated very hard on his ice. His stomach flipflopped again. He decided, catching, but not parsing, the tail end of this exchange, that on the whole, he liked the feeling. It was sort of pleasant, like riding a teacup at the fair, or burrowing under a thick eiderdown. Aunt Cass's elegant hand relaxed into resting posture against his shoulder, which it then squeezed affectionately.

'I don't suppose you recall our exchange up in the library,' she said. 'When I came to fetch you back to us? What I said?'

'Course I do,' said Jims, indignant. ' _Rather you than me._ That's what you - Oh.' He stopped, chagrined.

'You are absolutely allowed,' said Aunt Cass, 'to like other things. And I don't care,' this somewhat defiantly, dark eyes flashing, 'what Madrun has to say about it. Is that clear?'

Jims nodded.

'Good,' said both aunts together. Jims tried and failed to snuggle simultaneously against the pair of them. It did not work, and leary of leaving anyone out, he resigned himself to leaning against the oak tree. Only, Aunt Persis pulled him close and Aunt Cass handed him her ice and said, 'Would you do me a favour and finish it, darling? I'm afraid I shan't be able to.'

Jims took the ice, closed his eyes and took a bite. So everything was all right after all. Even the heat was bearable now, with the leafy overhead of the oak for protection and the remnants of Aunt Cass's ice to nurse. It was, on reflection, a surprisingly good day, and Jims savoured it.


	19. A Picture is Worth

_I've done something different with this one, in a tip of the hat to Ann-Marie MacDonald. If you want a good, gothic, Canadian read in this time of social distancing, you can't ask for better than her._

* * *

November-December, 1928; Iris 19 -

* * *

All that's gone now. The relaxed, open atmosphere of the interwar. But for the photos you would never know it had existed.

And there were photographs. Time and various people had seen to that; Carl Meredith occasionally, Una still more occasionally and amateurishly, once or twice Naomi Blake as had been had documented their lives. And before her, Di Blythe. Everyone remembered Di's photos of the 1926 flood, of the boats sailing in Middle Alley, but she took other, more mundane subjects, too. Iris found them years later tucked into books, appended to sheets of crisp letter paper, enshrined in frames and folded protectively among the blankets.

This one was of the tea bowls. There were twelve tea bowls, all red, all with a butterfly motif repeating across them. It's impossible to tell from the photo, but it was never the same twice; Iris, who grew up drinking from them, knew this.

In the picture they were displayed pride of place in the china cabinet, twelve red tea bowls like the scarlet captains of a china army. Behind them stood the ranks of the Gladstone Blue Ribbon. The Gladstone Blue Ribbon was the pride and joy of Una Meredith, and before her of Cecilia Meredith, who was Iris's grandmother. The red tea bowls with their butterflies – no two the same – were a wedding present from Carl Meredith to Iris's mother.

The way Una Meredith told it, she knew about the tea bowls in the first instance because Carl brought them to her in an agony of indecision.

'I know we have Mummy's china,' he'd said, 'but I wanted to have…I guess I thought Li might like to start life at Trinity House with something of her own.' He said this as if it was some terrible admission of disloyalty to the memory of their mother, or possibly to Una. Una, telling this to Iris, thought her father believed either or both of these things might have been true. Whichever it was, saying it seemed to ease the way for the rest as Carl hemmed and hawed about would they be good enough and would Li like them. Una picked up a tea bowl, cradled it between her hands and agreed it was absolutely right that Li have her own things to impress upon the house, and these were lovely, of course Li would like them.

All of this surmise was born out when, in the second instance, Li had unwrapped them in the privacy of the sun-room and squealed for Una to come and examine them. Una, marking in the dining room, duly came through the passage and joined Li in waxing lyrical about the brightness of the colours, the subtlety of the pattern, the ease with which they sat in the hand. How perfect their balance, the curvature of the bowl.

'Sometimes,' said Li as she stroked a glazed red tea bowl, 'Carl wakes up and notices us, you see? Mind you,' and here she gave Una her patented water-lily smile, 'it could also be that he noticed the butterflies in the paintwork.'

Una laughed, and laughed still more when an evidently alert Carl gave a cry of indignation worthy of Puck.

'I _do_ notice things,' he said, and crossed his arms over his chest. 'Lots of them!'

'Of course,' said Una. 'Like monkeys.'

'Lizards,' Li said.

'Mynas.'

'Snakes.'

'Especially venomous ones,' said Una.

'Butterflies,' said Li, and they laughed. Even Puck, who was creeping incrementally closer to the tissue-shrouded tea bowls on the chance they were home to stray peanuts, joined in.

'Look,' Li said, 'Puck agrees. Carl can't possibly argue with us now.' Her eyes were shining with mirthful tears. They looked like dark, glassy moons. Carl affected to look more wounded than ever, but it was a very bad performance. With tremendous dignity he said, 'I thought the butterflies were a nice touch.' But then, before their party could dissolve still further he said, 'And I also thought you said something once about red being lucky, and it's all been so difficult that I thought maybe it would be nice for you, the red. The luck. Sort of an omen for us going forward, or something.'

He shrugged, sheepish, and Li got a willowy arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. She kissed his cheek, and Una took Puck in hand before he could strategically interrupt the young lovers on the sofa.

Iris loved this part of the story, could picture them as they had been, her mother, father and Aunt, laughing in the sun room with the animals around them and the tea bowls in their tissue nests on the table. If she closed her eyes she could picture how bright her mother's eyes surely were on this occasion, how warm and gentle her smile. Her father too, with that one good, bright blue eye sparkling. And Aunt Una placid as water, flexible as a willow, the sun irradiating all of them, but especially those twelve red tea bowls. All such a long time ago.

They came to be in the cabinet, where they are in the photo, because placid, willowy Aunt Una retreated from the tableau. That was how she used to tell it to Iris; Li got her arm around Carl and kissed his cheek in thanks, and Aunt Una took Puck in hand before he could strategically interrupt the young lovers on the settle.

'Come on,' Una said, 'there's a job that wants doing.'

There was absolutely no circumstance under which Una Meredith would trust Puck in the handling of the Gladstone Blue Ribbon; she had visions of him tearing round her kitchen with the pieces pell-mell. She did not say this in so many words, but Iris knew it anyway, remembered her as she had been with the monkey. And anyway, Aunt Una all but confirmed it. By her account she settled Puck with his beloved peanuts and undertook the reordering of the china cabinet herself. Una could not quite bring herself to pack Cecilia Meredith's pattern away, but she took care to clear a space in the front of the cabinet that would leave the twelve red tea bowls in pride of place. As for the Gladstone Blue Ribbon in the background – call it their mother's blessing on the marriage, or as close as she could get to giving it.

'Though of course,' Una said with an apologetic stroke of the teapot, 'the tea bowls will be for every day now. But you won't mind that, I know.'

So the tea bowls were installed in pride of place at Trinity House, Evelyn Road, and as it fell out, that was the easiest part of the wedding preparations. They were as beautiful as they were delicate, were those twelve red tea bowls. The picture did not do them justice.

* * *

The second picture was also of the sun-room, though now it was rainy. The sky washed grey in the background, and if you looked you could see there was a fire blazing. Li was an adept at fire-building, and must have built one on this rainy November afternoon. Iris knew it was November because of the date on the back. Her mother, Iris remembered was shocked by how completely fire defeated the Merediths.

'But,' Iris could hear her saying to Aunt Una, 'you can do everything else!'

And Aunt Una, as she ever did, would confess her bone-deep dread of catching her hair on the flame, of being more used to coal, and latterly to gas, than to wood, so that she had never learned to lay it just right. Li would threaten, as she always threatened, to teach Puck, since he was so keen on getting into things, and since that way he would make himself useful into the bargain. One day she really did it – taught Puck – but not, Iris thought, looking at the photo, on _that_ particular rainy November afternoon, because in the photo it was Li sat by the fire.

If you squinted, you could see the red tea bowls, but only three of them.

These were, as Una told it – because no one else either wanted to or could not bring themselves to tell it – the easiest part of Iris' parents wedding arrangement. Somehow, in spite of Singapore's multiplicity of religious institutions there was spectacular trouble securing one to take the service. They were discussing this in the photo, Li, Carl and Aunt Una. Puck was there too, but being Puck, he was at that moment entirely too occupied massing a peanut hoard to join in meaningfully. Now they sat around the blaze, Carl and Li on the settle and Una poised as elegantly as was possible atop a footstool while simultaneously nursing an incarnadine tea bowl and a sleep-leaded feline. The red – for the photo was coloured in – made a striking contrast to the navy of her work dress, the white of her peter pan collar.

There was audio too, if Iris closed her eyes, recalled Aunt Una's rendition of this afternoon long ago. Listened.

'The difficulty,' said Carl, 'is this; The presbytery don't like it, the Catholics wouldn't marry us if we wanted them to, nor would the Anglicans, who anyway have such a grim, cheerless cathedral that I can't bring myself to feel disappointed about it. Li's people have made it very clear that they won't, either, so there's no one to perform the ceremony. And obviously the alternative is impossible.'

'Obviously,' Una said. 'Though if that's all – '

Here Carl interjected. 'All?' he said. 'All? I should have thought that was quite the significant point.'

'Well,' said Una, as rain drummed in the background, 'in the usual way – look, how attached are you to it being a Presbyterian wedding?'

Carl blinked. At the coffee table, Puck was noisily counting his peanuts, while over by the fire Li's eyes darted like sleek, dark dragonflies between the Meredith siblings. Una saw her; she and Carl both did, and so fell silent anticipating her contribution. Li made none though, only continued to watch them, serene, a tea bowl cradled in her hands. The rain continued its droning and Puck went on calculating the quantity of his culinary bounty. Their little sun room smelled of camphor wood burning and aromatic jasmine. It was like incense, the combination. Iris remembered it well. Had smelled it often.

Carl said, 'Una Meredith, you're plotting something. I should know; I remember our Rainbow Valley days. Which were, incidentally, the last time I knew you to plot anything.'

Una did not answer this directly. She said, 'There's a chance I could persuade the Rev Peach up at the school to perform the ceremony. Miss Cornelia wouldn't like it, obviously, but she's not actually here, and if you're agreeable, I don't see why it should matter. I mean, it's not as if it makes the marriage invalid, or anything.'

On the settle, Li's eyes brightened as she took this in. She offered Una her slow-blooming water-lily smile.

'He will not mind?' asked Li.

Una shook her head. 'No. He'd see it as the logical extension of his work with the children up at the school. I think.'

'You know,' said Carl, 'I never could work out the difference between Presbyterians and Methodists, anyway. What is it, actually?'

'Dancing,' said Una, never missing a beat. Carl laughed. 'That can't be it,' he said. 'We couldn't dance, either.'

'We,' said Una with dignity worthy of the cat on her lap, 'were children of a Presbyterian _minister_. Of course _we_ couldn't dance. But the others did. Methodists can't dance at all, whoever their parents are.'

Opposite her, Carl's one blue eye narrowed. 'You're being serious,' he said. 'And I was sure you were having me on, too.'

'Of course I'm being serious,' said Una. 'Why? What did _you_ think the difference was?'

'Well, _God_ ,' said Carl, helpless. 'Or at least something halfway theological, anyway.'

'Oh,' said Una, almost careless. 'Well, if you're going to split hairs like that you're asking completely the wrong person. You'll have to write to father about that.'

Carl grinned. 'I will,' he said. 'After the wedding.' Then, the grin splitting wickedly across his face, 'I tell you what it is,' he said. 'You've been at that school too long. No wonder you can't tell us from them.'

Una laughed, and Li, seeing that all this ribbing was in good, gentle, fun, joined in. Puck had obviously decided he could risk dividing his hoard because he threw a peanut at Li's tea bowl. She caught it deftly. Cue more laughter and further peanut missiles.

'You can tell father all about that, too,' said Una, when she had recovered.

'Oh, _he_ won't mind,' said Carl. He never does. But Cornelia…'and the grin splitting his face deepened still further, were it possible. 'I will write, though,' he said. 'I'll send pictures, too. There will be pictures? You'll take them?'

He had become suddenly, childishly eager.

'I won't,' said Una, 'but only because I can't take any worth keeping, and you ought to have a wedding remembrance that is worth looking over and remembering. We'll trust pictures to someone else. It's a shame Di ever went back to Ingleside.'

And not, whatever Carl said to the contrary, just because Di had commiserated about Puck, who was presently scurrying around the room with fiendish alacrity to regather his peanuts. Besides, Li was here now; she understood the trials and tribulations of life with a Puck. As if her thought had galvanised him to action, a stray peanut went sailing into the fire. It hissed and spat there while Puck shrieked his annoyance and stamped aggrieved simian feet.

'But,' said Li, 'there will be friends? I think you said before you had guests coming…'She trailed off, uncertain. But she was hopeful too. Una hated to leave her in the limbo of uncertainty.

'Yes,' said Una. 'Well, not guests. Not exactly. They aren't actually staying with us. But we do have friends travelling here. We overlapped in Kingsport. I seem to recall Naomi is even decently good at pictures when pressed. I'm sure she and Fred will be more than happy to help.'

'They'd better be,' said Carl. 'If Fred Arnold is in attendance than at least one of our party outwith your Rev Peach will actually be the denomination of the service.'

'Carl,' said Una, 'stop.' So saying she plucked a peanut from Puck's unsuspecting hand and threw it at him. It was harder to say whether monkey or human was more indignant.

It was not, strictly speaking, a real picture that one, not something Iris could take out of a book and examine at will. There was no frame preserving it. Nothing so grand. Rather, it was stamped on her mind's eye from copious retellings. She liked to look at it in grey, thin hours; hear how they must have laughed, teased and smiled at one another in the haven of the sun room. In those days their greatest concern would have been the fine details of the wedding and the rain outside the house. Iris liked thinking of them like that, thought happiness suited them.

* * *

Here was a picture of the wedding. It was appended to a letter in Aunt Una's script, her handwriting delicate and curling on the wafer-thin paper she favoured. The paper was blue with a watermark of a soaring crane. The crane's wings were spread wide across the paper, each tip connecting with a corner. The very ghost of a bird.

As per the letter, Naomi and Fred Arnold arrived in time for Christmas, their cases laden with treasures from the Glen and further. Naomi unpacked them on the floor of the sunroom like a dark-haired crooked-nosed but fundamentally benevolent elf. The letter did not detail these, presumably because the Manse Merediths were well-versed in the contents, but Iris knew them anyway; could recall Una's rapture over them even in the retelling. There were supplies for the ACS, a tin of Rosemary Meredith's crumbly, buttery shortbread, the latest in mysteries courtesy of Anne Blythe, Jerry's rendering of the St Lawrence by sunset and the usual clutch of Christmas cards from the others.

'They thought we'd get here faster than the postal service,' said Naomi. Fred, sprawled by the fire, nodded his seconding of this opinion and began good-naturedly to wrestle with Akela. The dog was damp and muddy courtesy of an outdoor adventure, and Fred was utterly unfazed by it. He would have smelled as only a damp dog could, too, and it was funny, now Iris had met him, to picture smartly dressed Fred Arnold grappling with twenty-odd pounds of wet dog there on the sun room floor.

Naomi began to unpack further wedding presents; there was a set of silver teaspoons from the Glen St Mary Manse that Una made Rosemary's idea, since left to his own judgement her father would probably have sent off the latest in service book instructions or somesuch. (That part of the story always made Iris laugh after she had met Grandpa Meredith, because it was such an apt summary of him.) There was a long-necked, elegant vase from Larkrise in testament to the fact that Faith Blythe could pick out delicate things provided no one expected her to keep them intact, and a knitted quilt from Fox Corner.

'But,' said Li frowning, 'I thought you said they weren't your family?'

'Not on paper, anyway,' said Una and smiled.

From Nan and Jerry there was a copy of _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ , the inscription on the fly leaf expressing best wishes and many years of happiness. Now it was also a sacred space for photos; it was where the picture of those twelve red tea bowls had surfaced.

From Bruce there was an unlooked for bounty of red, richly embossed pillowcases with a shy note appended to them explaining he'd been given to understand they were a customary gift, for which Li looked ready to weep. She pulled Una and Carl both into a fierce hug instead. (The pillows were there too, in the chest. They smelled of camphor and were free of moths. The embroidery was still rich, beautiful and intact. Iris couldn't quite bear to think of Aunt Una boxing them up that last time, before she was taken away from the house. Away from Puck.)

They parcelled these things away (though not into camphor chests, not then) or displayed them as occasion warranted. There were no excursions to Raffles Square, because they were not Raffles people, and anyway, the Arnolds were not staying at the famous hotel. They regared it, as did the people of Trinity House, as a strange, funny island of the well-to-do, a thing and place unto itself. But there were still taxi-dances and cafes, music spilling out of open windows and drives out into the countryside. It was such a beautiful jewel of a country.

The letter lingered over the reunion of friends; the little differences that had sprung up since Una and Naomi had last seen each other, but also the constants. Naomi was still, Una noted, one of the few women who wore no scent. (Aunt Una was perhaps the other, except on very, very special occasions.) Naomi was also one of the rare people Iris's aunt was demonstrative with; she must have been because she had let Naomi hug her welcome and had stood there in the hall taking stock of how happy she looked, trading news of home. (Home was Singapore to Aunt Una, but it must have been Glen St Mary to Naomi. Iris could see this unsaid thing between the spaces of the lines, the careful selection of the words. Aunt Una, as ever, trying to spare everyone's feelings.)

But the real proof they loved each other, if you asked Iris, was found in the report of how easily they fell into amicable Christmas preparations.

That part was in the letters if the gifts were not; a lively, amiable account of Naomi and Una gently jostling for ownership of the Trinity House kitchen while Li sat at the kitchen table, patiently slicing, soaking and dicing whatever looked necessary, pausing when pressed to take her turn wishing over the pudding, nodding in approval when Una tucked a sixpence into the ready batter. Iris used to do it too; she remembered vividly standing on a chair, Aunty's hands lovingly wrapped around hers helping her to stir, whispering ticklishly against Iris's ear 'Remember to wish, Firecracker.'

And although it was ages ago, Iris could recall it like yesterday, the grain of the spoon, the subtle curve of its stem from years of use. The smell of the kitchen growing ever thicker with the fiery scent of brandy on the soaking Christmas Cake and the spice of baking. Cinnamon mingled with nutmeg, which mixed with cloves as cider bubbled and boiled.

These things, reliable as the north star, were lightly glossed, dwelling instead on how Fred was put forward for canonisation when he not only took immediately to Puck, but corralled him out of Una's narrow kitchen and taught him how to string popcorn.

'A very useful trick,' said Naomi solemnly. But her smile was wry, even arch, and Una and Li both laughed with her over it.

'But he's not _here_ ,' said a jubilant Una. 'It's the best gift I'll get this season, and that's a fact.'

So saying Una rolled out a batch of marzipan, filling the air with almond flavour and sending eddies of icing sugar everywhere. Some of it landed on her cheek and Li brushed it carelessly, laughingly away. The paste stuck stubbornly to the rolling pin, so Una scattered more sugar. Nenni minced delicately through this powdery, culinary snow to sniff vigorously a marzipan Santa, who was stranded in a snowy, marzipan wilderness. She left him lopsided atop his marzipan chimney. Nenni took no notice; she had long since commenced a scrupulous wash, with particular attention to her bepowdered paws. Naomi leaned across Una's shoulder to right him but Li said, 'No, leave it. Like that there is a story to him,' so Naomi subsided and stamped gingerbread into Christmas Tree shapes instead. She had seasoned the dough thoroughly and the tarry molasses and the tang of the ginger made a sharp contrast to the cloying sweet of the marzipan.

She stuck the biscuits in the oven and Una finished with the cake. Li lifted the bubbling cider from the hob, poured it into mugs stamped in Royal Albert's Christmas Old Country Rose. They were fearfully overwrought and Victorian, and a gift from Phil Blake when Una and Carl had first set out for Singapore. Una strongly suspected the minister's wife of regifting them.

She'd become certain of it when Phil's eyes had twinkled devilishly and she'd said, 'Every house needs something positively ungodly to put up with by way of a housewarming gift. Even yours. It builds character, in you and the house.' Even so, the mugs might have been gifted long ago to the ACS, but Li had declared them, upon discovery, to be charmingly, quintessentially English, and for her sake they continued at Trinity House.

Naomi, seeing them, burst out laughing and said, 'Gracious, did Mama give you those? I wondered where they got to!'

Li, seizing an opening, said, 'You've known each other long?' She phrased it as a question, but was not really asking, Una knew. More trying to reconstruct the friendship.

'It feels long,' said Naomi, which was perhaps the best summary anyone could give of their friendship.

But for the letter, Iris would know none of this, about those mugs. They had always occasioned a chorus of laughter from mother and aunt; the reason for it came alive on that water-thin paper, in that delicate, well-inked hand. Imagine using a fountain pen on paper so fine! How carefully Aunt Una must have written!

What followed was strange, and was strange even to Aunt Una as she wrote it. As per the letter, Una sipped the cider in those funny, beloved mugs and inhaling cinnamon, and was shocked to think hers and Naomi's original point of overlap had been in the other woman's sister, Ruthie. Golden, elfin Ruthie, who had also loved and lost Walter Blythe. This though, did not warrant saying. It was a bygone dream from another life, and anyway, Li knew that part of her history, Una thought. Iris had never known it; these were dreams of a bygone life, she supposed, that her aunt had never seen reason to voice.

Besides, it was the friendship with Naomi that had stuck. They grew it over long afternoons tending to what was affectionately termed by the Martyrs' Mission congregants 'The Bundle Kirk,' which was to say the surrounding parish of Rev Jo Blake. Together they had helmed efforts to bundle parcels – this was the provenance of the beloved parish pet name – clothed the naked, and fed the hungry. It was enough to deepen the friendship and silence the lingering ghost of Walter Blythe. Nights, late, when they had finished with their work, Phil foisted the Christmas Old Country Rose on them, brimful of strong, hot soup, or tea as occasion warranted, determined to make the china useful or die trying. Then Una had gone to Singapore and Naomi to the Glen, and their letters had winged back and forth just as fast as various postal services would allow. But now Naomi was in Singapore too, at Trinity House on Evelyn Road and it might have been Patterson St again, the Christmas baking meant for a church supper and not only a family gathering.

Not quite though, because Li was there, accentuating and altering the old rhythm so that it sang in a different key. It wasn't, couldn't be the same, but then, if Una Meredith had been afraid of difference and change she would never have left Kingsport in the first place. She sipped the well-spiced cider and thought, from the way Li nodded and listened, that she understood some of this.

All of this was in that letter, a living, breathing account of an age gone by. Thinness of the paper notwithstanding, Iris felt the pulse of it slow and beating under her fingers.

It wasn't long afterwards that Carl and Li were married. This took place in the chapel of the Anglo-Chinese school, the Rev Peach presiding. Li was resplendent in red, her hair elaborately coiled and dressed by Una with yellow and blue iris flowers that Carl had got from heaven-knew-where. There was a story in the irises, but Una thought it might be too early to tell it, so did not press. She herself wore her all-purpose Good Days Dress, this being Christopher Blythe's childish name for a deep blue moire, trimming it at collar, sleeves and hem with scarlet for the occasion. It was not navy like the work dress, but more the colour of midnight. Subtler even, the blue of the sky as it turns from deep night to dawn twilight on a summer evening, never really having got dark at all. Una Meredith wore that dress until it was worn out with good events; the colour made her look like a goddess of the night sky. As a little girl Iris had adored it. She used to sit in her aunt's closet and envelop herself in its finery. She cried bitterly when, inevitably, it was swapped for something new. But on the day of her parents' wedding, it was still new, still vibrant.

There were pictures of all of this; Naomi Blake as had been did indeed agree to take them when asked. They were amateurish, but they caught Li's water-lily smile and Carl's incandescent happiness as gleaming from that good, blue eye, and that seemed the prescient thing. Now they peeked out at Iris from behind frames worn smooth with age, lovingly preserved between the pages of a favourite book, or Aunt Una's bible.

The Christmas Cake with its lopsided Santa did double duty as a wedding cake; Li salvaging the Santa before cutting into it. Even so, the marzipan saint was short-lived. Nenni bit his nose, and deciding she disliked almonds, swatted him loftily onto the floor, whereat Akela took it upon himself to finish what Neni had so regally started. This was one of Iris's favourite images of all.

Fred forgot to be Methodist and joined Carl in demanding there be dancing, so Una wound the gramophone and _Rhapsody in Blue_ blossomed into slow, sensuous life. Afterwards Irving Berlin crooned something unknown to Una, but she let Fred persuade her into dancing anyway, laughing with him when Nenni's waltz-step got in the way of their timing and Akela harmonised with Berlin. All this was in the letter, but there was also a corresponding picture. It was blurred, and imperfect, but the feeling was there, if not the music.

Puck threw rice, and then peanuts with gusto, though he afterwards gathered up and gobbled his confetti. This was why, in many of the photos Una sent home, the happy couple was not only smiling but laughing outright. Indeed, they all were.

It was all very small, and still more private as weddings went. It was hard not to think Li's family should have witnessed it, and the Merediths. Una _did_ think it, later, writing the wedding up in her bible. _Carl Meredith m Li Xue , December 28, 1928._ The letter said so. It was hard-won happiness to be sure, but perhaps all the dearer for it.

In what was Una's private favourite of the pictures, Carl had his arm around Li while Puck perched on his shoulder. Where anyone else might have worn a rosette or a handkerchief, there was what looked suspiciously like a snake peeking out of Carl's suit pocket. Fred stood next to him with Akela at his feet, his head against Fred's knees, no doubt decorating them with whatever colour fur would best contrast his suit. Una was beside Li, and Nenni, distrustful of photos but determined not to be left out, stalked spotted, sleek and bristling across some imaginary centre stage, her tail the proudest, most arrogant of question marks.

It was this photo pinned gently to the letter in Iris's hands; her family, their friends, the collection of animals even then intruded – or was it comingled? – upon them. It was so long ago. An epoch of her life. Another life, even. But how happy they looked – how carefree, open and unreserved. Almost it was inconceivable.


	20. Recipe for Perfect Happiness

_Well, I don't know what you'll make of it. Either the isolation has turned me completely bonkers, or you all have as much fun reading this as I had writing it. This one's for you, OzDiva - it's all your fault. Hopefully it makes you laugh at least as much as that last chapter made you cry._

* * *

 _T_ _o start_ , wrote Anne Blythe, who had never meant to write another short story, not this summer, certainly not of this ilk, _you must find a suitable person. Tall, tanned and impish is recommended_. She could practically feel Gilbert preening beside her. This was why, she thought, not for the first time, she had certainly not planned on _reading_ this nonsense. It wasn't even a story, so much as a recipe. And she'd only written it at all because inspiration had descended in a burst of dazzling sunlight while she sat at her little desk with the inlaid initials and painted wildflowers. John Blythe had made it for her, oh, years ago now, as a wedding present, and it _almost_ never failed to inspire.

This though, this ribald ramble through sentimentality, well, that owed more to the epistles of her own Living Epistles than it did to the desk, or even to the bold little nuthatch serenading her on the windowsill. It was just that people _would_ keep asking.

'How do you do it?' had said a dreamy Rilla one afternoon as they pieced a quilt top there on the veranda. She had smiled at Anne with that dented lower lip, and looked expectant and caught Anne short.

Then again, there was young Jack Wright's wife as they holidayed in Avonlea, feasting on dear Diana's cherry pie. 'You make it look so _easy_ , Mrs Blythe.'

And Anne had said, the taste of cherry tart on her tongue, 'Make what look easy, darling?' really baffled.

'Oh,' said the younger Mrs Wright, 'marriage, of course.'

'She's always done, you know,' said Diana in conspiratorial whisper. 'Took to it like a duck to water. As natural as breathing. Always.'

Gilbert had not been there, or Anne might have looked to him to confirm that she was not alone in her surprise.

But then Naomi Blake had kissed her the day she was to be married and said as she accepted Anne's offering of the veil ('for something old, darling') 'If we're half as happy as you and Uncle Gil, or as Dad with Mama, we'll have done well, I think.'

'Oh,' said Anne, returning the kiss, 'I have confidence you'll do very well indeed.' It had been well-placed faith, too. Just look how happy Jo's baby had made Fred Arnold.

And then, and this was really what had done it, the children's letters were full of it. Sometimes wistful - _how do you do it, Mums? Doesn't it ever get Too Much -_ sometimes teasing - _at least you never had to accomodate a Dachshund that smelled of well water! - _sometimes succinct but heartfelt _happy anniversary! All our love.._. And after the nth of these, Anne had been sitting down at her desk, meditating on an answer, how to distill the dance that was hers and Gilbert's, boil that history to it's essence, and a story had struck.

She really _hadn't_ intended to read it. But Gilbert had found it, and laughed until he wept over what he said was the greatness of it, the best thing she had ever written, he said. Then he kissed her soundly for it, and kissed the story in turn, and insisted that the children hear it. And since they were all together, the children, and since that almost never happened, Anne had declared a writerly evening on the veranda and assembled them. Curly-haired Jem, still with his war-whoop, jauntily leaning his chair against the white of the house. That his chair was dangerously connected with a boxed floral arrangement and liable to disgorge the botanical contents onto the veranda at any moment stopped Faith not at all from sitting against his knees, nor Jem from carding through her golden hair. Shirley sprawled more self-possessedly, if this were not a contradiction in terms, under the kitchen window. Easier, Anne supposed, for Susan's baking to find him. Mara was at his elbow, golden and witching as ever, folded elegantly into the kind of impossibly straight-backed kneeling position Anne could never have maintained, even before falling off that ridgepole. Rilla and Ken Ford had their backs to the calceolarias, leaning as they were against the rail and effectively blocking the plants from Anne's view. She felt disloyal to Susan in her secret joy at this, but told herself this was as much because they looked so at ease together as it was over the absence of Susan's beloved flowers from the scene. Nan and Jerry sat like normal people on chairs that did not jaunt treacherously towards anything, which was incongruous only because Anne had visited their home the year their girls were born and new better of their normalcy. Carefully-poised chairs and impeccable order hadn't really been part of that. And, then too, twins did for impeccable order just by virtue of existing in a home. She smiled at Nan and shook her head to let her know as much. Di sat opposite Mara, likewise kneeling, her head on Alastair McNeilly's shoulder.

And Anne? Anne half-sat, half-leaned against Gilbert on the veranda swing. She looked out at all this contentedness and thought it was if not exactly a living epistle then perhaps a living poem. One she would try for later. But now it was witching hour, and her children were before her in their glory, and she owed them a story.

 _To start,_ she began, _you must find a suitable person. Tall, tanned and impish is recommended_. Gilbert dared to wink at her and the children squealed and squirmed, as squeamish as they had ever been at the sight of parental happiness. One would be forgiven, Anne felt, for presupposing they had never so much as married themselves – and forget having ever had children, the lot of them! She stifled a laugh in Gilbert's broad, sunwarmed shoulder and shook her head. Thought how pleasingly he smelled of himself and his work, and also of the milky newness of the littlest of the grandchildren. She made a mental note to inquire into this shared adventure. But she shelved it for the present and read on.

 _Of course,_ _this is only a guideline. Substitution to accommodate taste is recommended._

'Oh, I don't know,' said Faith, 'I think what you've got there has its successes.' The skirt of her gown, which was a geranium red, rustled as she shifted position against Jem's knees. Probably the legs of the chair were prodding her uncomfortably. Jem guffawed heartily, and Anne was just thinking that Jem was more lobster than sunkissed if left out in the summer sun, more the colour of Faith's skirt even, when she caught Faith wink at Shirley's Mara, and understood the joke.

'I for one,' said Gilbert, 'want to hear this story, if no one else does. Darling?'

'It's not a story,' said Anne with tremendous dignity. It was the kind of dignity worthy of ruffled cats, Rachel Lynde and possibly of Queens and Goddesses. 'It's a _recipe_.'

'Of course it is.'

 _Now, having secured persons relevant, ensure that nothing – and this is important, you will note the underline for emphasis – absolutely nothing hinders your first evening alone together. Guests are strenuously discouraged, at least until you've got to know one another more intimately. _

'Mum!' said several children at once. Someone said – was it Mara? – 'I heard tell you quite liked your Captain Jim.'

 _Well that's all right,_ Anne thought, with a shake of her head. _The impishness goes both ways there._ Gilbert was hastening to say they did, they had, really they had, but honestly, some things were not to be born.

'All we wanted – ' he began.

' _Dad!_ ' from the same vexed children as before.

Jem said, positively laconic, 'I make that perfectly sensible advise.'

'Do you so,' said Mara with an amused shake of her head. 'Because it strikes me that did you agree with it, what you'd not have done was turned up on the doorstep of eight-odd would-be actresses living economically in a too-small house _after_ the wedding, and begging a place to sleep because you hadn't thought about boarding houses, much less telling the family what had happened. How you expected even minutes alone …' But she said it good-naturedly. One could tell as much from the flash of her eyes and the twitch of her mouth. Even the deliberate broadening of her teuchter was clearly deliberate, an old joke between them.

Gilbert bent his head enticingly close to Anne's own and whispered, 'A dollar says they've had that argument out more times than there are ways from Sunday.' His breath was warm and ticklish against Anne's skin and curled stray strands of hair. She swatted at him with her writing.

Faith said, 'We'd had enough of waiting.'

Little murmurs of sympathetic assent rippled through the various couples.

'So you said then, and so you've said since,' said Mara, still smiling. Anne reached into a pocket and found a dollar for Gilbert, handing it to him absently. She was thinking of her tower room of years ago, and just the right nib. What a blessing these things had been the greatest of her own worries – and how unknowingly lucky that they should be. She was sorry the children could not say the same.

'There's a list here,' she said, brandishing her recipe, 'on how to deter guests. Shall I read it, or skip ahead?'

' _Please_ no,' said several children at once.

'Go to the next bit. Unless the next bit is what to do having deterred the guests, in which case, skip that, too.' That was Rilla. Ken squeezed her shoulders and nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'don't let's find out what sort of use my parents' first home can be put to. I so like to think of it as a fairy-tale place. You know, where everything ends with a kiss.'

Not to be outdone, Gilbert had now got his arm around the dangerous territory of Anne's waist. It was a warm, suntanned arm, what with all those house of fishing with grandchildren and lounging on the veranda. He kissed Anne's ear now and said in a stage whisper, 'For doctor's children, do you not think our children exceptionally squeamish, Anne-girl?'

'Yes,' she said. She drew the word out, so that it became an improbable three syllables. 'I can't begin to think where we went wrong with them.'

'All that stork nonsense,' he said. 'I told you we'd pay for it later on, and here we are. Can't bear the thought of their parents' happiness.'

'Nah,' said Jem, still lackadaisical as ever. 'It's not that. It's how the happiness gets expressed they mind about. 'Sides, storks have nothing to do with it. It's cabbages that grow babies. Young Iain Blythe tells me so. You pull them up and there the babies are where the roots should be.'

Here Gilbert tilted his head Mara-ward and said, 'Your doing, I suppose?'

Mara held up both hands in protest and said, 'Not at all. We always had good, unadulterated sense by way of growing up at Anchorage.'

Opposite her, Alastair McNeilly nodded. Shirley said, 'I expect that gem owes to Mouse.'

There was really nothing else to say to this, so Anne resumed her would-be story.

 _You will then try to be strictly Normal. This is difficult, as its working definition is vague, and no one, not even sage neighbours will espouse a clear grasp of what it actually means._ Here she perforce had to stop as bouts of bright, merry laughter overtook the company. There had been laughter in the background all the while of course; the grandchildren were having some adventure off in Rainbow Valley. But now the veranda rang with it. Bright, golden undiluted laughter to rival even the best carillon or touring orchestra. Anne relaxed against Gilbert's arm, pillowed her red head – well, what red was left anyway – against a broad shoulder and gloated in the sound of it. The night smelled of calceolarias, of June lilies and the sweet crumbs of leftover fudge – their witching hour treat. Only when the children subsided did she brandish her recipe-cum-story again, but half-heartedly. She was enjoying the echoes of their gaiety.

 _Normal is very difficult to achieve,_ she read. A smile tugged at her lips. _For prefect happiness one must become elastic, so that the definition stretches to encompass such things as late-night deliveries of other people's children, imperious aunts who invite themselves to stay indefinitely, bargains with God…_

'Once!' said Nan. She retrieved the cushion at her back and threw it lovingly at Anne. Anne caught it dutifully and arranged it for maximum comfort behind her back. Now _that_ was more like the woman Nan had grown into. Anne ignored her daughter's detailed protestation about that time she had walked only upon the furniture and resumed reading aloud. _Diamonds that are not purple, homesick dogs, and soup tureens with infants. Do not discount the possibility of extravagant green hats –_

Rilla did not throw a cushion. She had entirely too much self-possession for that. Instead she folded her arms across her chest – awkward because Ken still had one of her hands in his – and tilted her heart-shaped chin heavenwards.

' _Re-ally_ , Mother,' she said, but it was not her cold, pale tone. There was too much affection in it for that. And her eyes were crinkled like a teasing Gilbert's.

Anne read on, unapologetic, _And little dogs that sit for years at the train station._

'I reckon you missed out the bit about murder mysteries,' said Jem, 'and solving them. With one's infant children.' The rest of the quartet that was what Gilbert had long-since dubbed the Kingsport Contingent nodded solemnly. Shirley said from where he sprawled under the kitchen window, 'And a healthy dose of theatre, mustn't forget that.'

'But only the kind,' said Faith in her turn, 'with really, truly, absolutely nonsensical musical numbers. Often delivered in rapid-fire patter.'

'Try vague and ponderous questions about the theology of cats, more nearly,' said Mara, and swatted Shirely's hand duly away from the territory of her ankles.

Gilbert had the temerity to remove his arm from about Anne's person at that. He clapped his hands and said, 'Oh! I know that one! Except _I_ had to deal with matrimonial toads.'

Impossible not to feel a pang for Walter, Anne thought. She looked around at her massed children in their happiness and saw her two autumnal girls were feeling it, too. Di closed her eyes, smile dimming. Rilla did not so much snuggle as burrow against Ken Ford.

 _Do brace for catastrophe,_ Anne had written. _The world will creep in. Stockpile joys ._She did not read it. Her eyes glossed that bit as the children continued to rattle off their definitions of normal; bridge fours and theatre excursions, Dachshunds and Kensington Market eels. Banjos and the little fingers playing them, snowstorms with friends and crickets humming of a summer evening. Mandy and Miri whisking off for a dance at the town hall, hair streaming and legs flying, themselves crying indignantly of _Mums!_ and her need for photographs to document their loveliness, their immeasurable, sunset-spackled happiness. Oil paintings got a mention, and plots that worked out all right. The sleeplessness of something called an Easter Vigil that sounded wildly romantic to Anne's ear. Gilbert saw her think it and hissed in her ear, 'John Meredith will never forgive you if you Go Over. It's worse than dying. And anyway, Susan would never speak to us again.' He nipped affectionately at her ear, a promise for later.

Ken Ford caught only the mention of Susan, so said, 'We mustn't forget Madrun! All that cooking!'

'Or having friends nearby,' said Rilla. 'It's lovely, having Gertrude on the doorstep.'

If Anne was not entirely sure she agreed about the personage of Gertrude, well she understood the sentiment. Hadn't she missed her own Diana often enough? And Phil? Letters were wonderful, but they weren't the same.

'Vampire hunting!' said Jem. Well, crowed might have been more accurate. Off they went laughing again, while Di and Rilla goggled at them, the Kingsport Contingent, but also Anne and Gilbert there on their swing, who did understand and were also laughing. Di looked to Rilla, who looked back, and then they as a unit looked to the others wearing twin looks. _What on earth are you on about_ , the look said. Several people tried to explain. No one succeeded because no one was breathing easily enough to be coherent. Gilbert's eyes were glistered with mirthful tears.

'And pastoring the hens!' said Gilbert, which set them all off again, and this one everyone understood.

'It's all right for _you_ ,' said Mara with maternal pointedness to Gilbert. ' _You_ didn't have to explain that one to the Sunday School Teacher.'

'Do a lot of that, do you?' said Di. She had Gilbert's grin on her face, the Blythe Smile, two parts mischief to one sheer insouciance. It was in her voice, too, all warm and teasing. There was years of friendship in that verbal smile. It warmed Anne to her soul to hear it.

Mara only _looked_ , and it was the kind of look you'd expect of someone that lived by acting, but also of mothers everywhere. _You don't know the half of it_ , it said. Anne, who had too often tried to explain her own children's misadventures to various put-upon teachers, understood the sentiment. Indeed, she could see they all did in their way. So she smiled at Mara, and only half-wished that someone gave her a reprieve on the theological quandaries of the impossibly young. But not really, because life would be much diminished without Iain's wonderful, inventive reinterpretation of the universe, and probably his mother knew it.

'What comes next, Mums?' said Jem, breaking into her reverie.

Anne thought, _They will think me unapologetically soppy if I go direct to that bit about love and its importance_. She probably wouldn't mind either, because she meant it. But she was enjoying their laughter. They had had so much shadow mixed in with the light that really…well, it couldn't be _very_ wrong to want them to enjoy the light. Savour it. Wish them more of it. So she improvised.

'To finish,' said Anne, 'add water and stir for two minutes. Let stand.'

' _Mums!'_ they cried again, but it was half-jubilant, the best kind of exasperated, triumphal yell. The best sound there was.


	21. Recipe for a Happy Jims

_A Joyful Eastertide from Canada. Here's hoping you have the sun they forgot to send us._

* * *

1928, Toronto

* * *

'Absolutely not,' said Madrun. She was elbow-deep in batter for a culinary dish Jims couldn't identify, which only highlighted the urgency of the point he was trying to make. Madrun did not take it this way. Her eyes narrowed as she swivelled to face Jims, batter and flour still coating her formidable arms.

'What,' she demanded, 'is wrong with my cooking that you have to intervene?'

'Nothing!' said Jims, tripping over himself to get the words out. 'Nothing at all! But – '

'No buts,' said Madrun.'Cooking is like having a baby. Either you're having one or you're not.'

Jims couldn't see how this comparison held up at all, but refrained from saying so. Madrun had picked up a wooden spoon to make her point, and was brandishing it as she saw fit. Jims had learned _years_ ago to maintain a healthy terror of the wooden spoon at all times. Especially when wielded by Madrun.

'It's just,' said Jims, careful to eschew all usage of _But_ , 'Wednesday is your night off. And Sunday too, all day. Grandfather Gil doesn't want Mum _doing_ anything, see? So I have to learn to cook.'

'I,' said Madrun, with a terrifying wave of her spoon, 'Will prepare a dish for her to heat up before I go.' Another gesticulation of the spoon for emphasis, this one sending batter spattering onto the floor, propelled by the vehemence of the motion.

'I will further,' she went on in truly terrifying efficiency, 'put something in the Frigidaire for Sunday. And when I can't, I shall arrange with the senior Mrs Ford's girl to prepare extra for Sunday dinner.'

'The senior Mrs Ford' being what Madrun absurdly called Grandmother Leslie. Jims wasn't sure who thought it more ridiculous; Jims or said grandmother.

'You can,' said Madrun with tremendous dignity, 'eat there on Sundays, I'm sure. In fact,' with another animated wave of her spoon, 'In _my_ day it was positively normal to all take Sunday dinner together. Encouraged even. I cannot think why it has fallen out of practice.' And she muttered something darkly in Welsh that bypassed Jims' imperfect lexicon but probably had to do with the good old days and how superior they were to the decadence the young people indulged in today. Or something.

Jims opened his mouth, realised the next sentence started with _But_ and closed it resolutely. Instead he said, 'Won't that get in the way of everything else you do on a Wednesday?'

Madrun harrumphed. Jims thought if he looked hard enough he could see the steam coming out of her nostrils. She said, 'Not _half_ so much as teaching you to cook! Boys aren't _supposed_ to learn to cook, anyway.'

Vaguely Jims thought of citing his aunts, and their belief in his ability to do anything. But they weren't there in the kitchen, being subjected to the wild and varied gesticulations of Madrun's wooden spoon. That was Jims. _He_ was the one smelling nothing but what he presumed was batter for the haddock in the Frigidaire, getting the brunt of Madrun's opinions. Madrun set the spoon down. Specifically, she stuck it in the bowl of batter, where it stood upright, like some wooden flag demarcating the mixing bowl Madrun Land. Then she wiped the batter off her arms with a damp tea towel, and got a cool, water-dappled arm around Jims's shoulders in atypically demonstrative fashion.

'Cooking, _fy machgen,_ is what _I_ do. Go.' She gave Jims a push in the direction of the kitchen door. 'You go. Play with the little boys. Cricket, or boules or something. The one with the stick.'

'Hockey?' said Jims, and tried not to smile. No luck. Madrun clucked profusely, and swatted him affectionately on the back of the head with her tea towel. Jims took this for agreement, even as she bustled him out of her kitchen, his hands protectively cradling the back of his head against further onslaught by tea towel.

That was how Jims found himself alone on the kitchen steps, contemplating Madrun's effort at a herb garden. She had done it in English fashion, whatever that meant. All Jims understood of this was that it meant that the basil, mint, thyme and other herbs combined to perfume the air around the back of the house. It could be dizzying in hot weather. Today it felt like an aggressive reminder that he had no very good grasp of what smell went with what plant, much less what each of these herbs _did_.

Well, Madrun wouldn't help. She would have been ideal, because she was _brilliant_ at cooking, but no matter. Jims set off, through Madrun's herb garden, down the street, and along to the tram stop with a mind towards catching a car towards Castle Frank and Grandmother Leslie.

Jims' first thought was that he ought to have called ahead, because the house was dark. A quick survey of the windows suggested no one was in. Still, he'd come too far to turn back now. Jims doubled back to the door with its brass knocker and gave it a rap. Nothing. Another rap. More nothing. Then, as Jims was about to give up, his grandmother's singsong came from the other side of the door, 'Half a minute!'

The door swung open and Jims stumbled into her arms. She smelled all greeny and gardeny, which made sense once she said, by way of greeting, 'Forgive me darling. I was out round the back with the roses, and didn't hear you at first.'

She led Jims into the sitting room, where someone was halfway through tackling a puzzle that had more yellows than Jims thought entirely normal. The box, propped upright on an end table for comparison, showed an orange canoe on golden water sailing into a goldy-yellowy sunset.

'Owen's trying at it,' said Grandmother Leslie, seeing Jims observing it. 'Not making much headway, though. Why don't you give it a go? I'll put tea on. Or would you rather something else?'

What Jims wanted was to launch straight into the necessity of his learning to cook. But experience with Madrun made it clear that this was completely the wrong tack. Jims sat down at the coffee table and squinted at the puzzle pieces. Who knew there were so many shades of yellow? He had stuck exactly four together – in two separate pairs, mind – by the time Grandmother Leslie returned with tea and a platter of drop-scones. It was impossible to eat these _and_ tackle the puzzle, so Jims sat back on his heels in relief.

'There's cream,' said Grandmother Leslie. 'Jam, too.'

There was. It was strawberry, and it looked and smelled homemade. Jims thought that Madrun, were she here, might have accused it of failing to set. Unfortunately, since no one had taught him how to cook, he was unable to confirm if this was in fact the case. All Jims knew was that even now the jam was sliding off the cream and jeopardising his grandmother's carpet. Deftly she slid a plate under it and into Jims' hand. That was all right, then. The carpet with its miles of Persian weaving, was safe. Of course, the scone made talking difficult, the combination of thick cream, jam and doughy scone sticking in his throat. Jims sipped at his tea, and found that helped. He also wondered if that had been the point of the scone. If, perhaps, Madrun had rung ahead to remind Grandmother Leslie that little boys weren't supposed to know how to cook. Well, Jims was just going to have to remind her that he was almost _fourteen,_ if so, and as such, not little. He took another sip of tea. Grandmother Leslie slid onto the floor so that she was opposite him at the coffee table, looking far more elegant and collected than was strictly normal for a grandmother sitting limbs akimbo atop a Persian rug. But that was Grandmother Leslie for you. She held up a piece of yellow puzzle experimentally.

'Water, sky, or reflected sunset?' she asked. Then, as Jims leaned in, considering, 'You never came all the way over here unannounced for drop-scones and puzzles.'

Jims hadn't, but he found now with the scone lying thick in his stomach, that it was hard to articulate the original petition. He thought of Madrun with her draconian wooden spoon and quailed. Observed that the puzzle piece under scrutiny _definitely_ wasn't the orange canoe. Then he recalled that this was Grandmother Leslie, former goose girl of Four Winds, and good at listening. 'Well,' he said fidgeting wildly with his teacup, 'I wanted…that is, you need to teach me to cook.'

'Oh?' said Grandmother Leslie, sounding surprised. On the other hand, she didn't weaponise the puzzle piece under speculation, or even brandish the teapot like a military standard, so perhaps all was not lost. But then she said 'Why would that be, darling?' and Jims _knew_ it was useless. She was looking at him with concern, the way Jims had seen James Anderson scrutinise ailing livestock in the days of the Anderson Farmstead. The way Cap looked when he was critiquing a particularly egregious copy error in _The Toronto Star_. Or, more worrisomely, perhaps, the way Grandfather Gil looked when concerned with the general wellbeing of one of the family. The scone was consolidating in Jims' stomach the longer they sat there in silence, the sea of yellow puzzle between them, fragmented canoe sailing off into a gaping horizon. Still, the thing needed saying. Jims plunged bravely into the thick of it.

'The Doctor – I mean Grandadr – everyone says Mum shouldn't do anything until the baby is born,' said Jims. 'And,' because now he had started he couldn't seem to stop, 'I thought that might include cooking, because of all the heavy pots and things. It's mostly fine, I mean, Madrun mostly does the cooking except on Wednesdays, because that's her night off, which means _someone_ has to cook, and it can't be Mum. And Cap doesn't know how – I don't think – and I _know_ I don't know how, and obviously the little boys can't, so, you see...'

'Darling boy,' said Grandmother Leslie, contriving in spite of the coffee table to pull Jims into a hug he hadn't set out to solicit. 'Don't worry about that. We can do that.'

'But…'said Jims, feeling failure lapping at his heels, 'but…you might get sick, too. Or something could go wrong. You might have to go to a function with Grandfather Owen, and I _still wouldn't know how to cook_.' It seemed terribly important to impress this last pertinent piece of information upon her. Grandmother Leslie ran a hand through Jims's hair. He forbore to point out that he was really too old for such treatment. Was, in fact, 14, or almost-14, plenty old enough to know such culinary basics as how to roast a chicken, if only someone would show him. Grandmother Leslie said, 'It isn't your job, darling. You'll have all the time in the world to worry about that sort of thing – later. Let me do that now.'

Jims couldn't let her. He knew for a fact that Grandfather Gil believed she had never properly recovered from her brush with the Spanish Influenza all those years ago. It would only take a bad bout of _ordinary_ 'flu, and she might be dead, and then where would Jims and family be? Madrun would have to forego her Wednesdays off until they had imported Susan Baker from Ingleside to look after them. True, the aunts would try to help, but what if Grandmother Leslie were to die unexpectedly while they were both abroad? These things _happened_. All it took was one university professor to request their cumulative knowledge of indices and Maple St would be doomed. Well, as much as Madrun would let them be doomed. Still, it was hardly fair that Madrun lose her nights off in the name of the Fords not starving to death.

He couldn't say any of this to Grandmother Leslie. Somehow the words got stuck in his throat, which was atypically tight. It was probably the fault of the drop-scone. He sipped more tea and fussed with puzzle pieces, managing to complete the stern of the little canoe, and the tip of a paddle. Talk shifted to other things; Elektra the Maple St kitten, school, and how the Ford-Grant cricket rivalry faired. Jims and the little boys were winning, which they ought to enjoy while it lasted, since clearly they would lag behind as and when something happened to precipitate their starvation. Though, naturally Jims didn't phrase it that way. It wasn't fair on Grandmother Leslie to insinuate that she would fail them on that front. So Jims asked instead about the tapestry rug she was sewing, and came and peered over her shoulder at it dutifully when she produced it for him from her work bag. She reciprocated by asking what Jims was reading, and he didn't feel he could tell her about _The World Screamed_ and Professor Challenger, so hedged and gabbled something instead about how much they all were enjoying _The Giant Horse of Oz,_ which had been her birthday gift to Liam _._ Then he kissed her cheek and extricated himself from all of it; tea, polite conversation and the puzzle of variegated yellows.

'And don't worry, darling,' she said as she saw him off. 'We'll be sure to look after you.'

Jims kmade all the right noises, but it wasn't enough. At almost-14 he had outgrown being looked after, anyway.

* * *

'You've got,' said Jims, 'to teach me to cook.' As he said it he swung himself upwards so that he was sitting, legs dangling on the kitchen counter of the St. George St flat. Persis, watching him, thought he had rarely looked so childish. She tended to forget, between his captaining games of cricket with the little boys. Now he swung his ankles so that they knocked against unsuspecting cupboards, and Persis felt compelled to say, 'There are probably better-qualified people for that position.'

Jims shrugged. He said, 'Susan's awf'lly far away, and anyway, Mum says she never gives anyone the whole _Susan_ recipe. She said she left the baking powder out of the Jam Tart recipe Mrs Morris wanted from her the other day – that's Mum's friend from the Reds – ' this titbit for elucidation – 'and that she halved the amount of sugar in the recipe for Victoria Sponge that Irene Howard wanted…though Mum _also_ said she didn't understand how anyone _couldn't_ know how to make a Victoria Sponge, which I don't, by the way. And Mum _still_ says Susan tampered with her cream puffs the one time she tried to make them. But the point is…'

Here Jims was brought up short as he struggled to recapture the point of this culinary ramble. He gave his ankles an extra swing for good measure. One of them collided with a cupboard handle, and he offered Persis a grimace. 'The point is,' he said, rubbing at the afflicted ankle, 'I can't ask Mum, because of the baby. That's sort of the point. And I can't ask Cap, because I don't think he knows. I _did_ ask Madrun, but she…'Another pause as Jims appeared to consider exactly why and how Madrun, guardian of the Maple St kitchen, had failed him '…She had …. _opinions_ ,' said Jims, finally, with emphasis.

'I think,' said Persis, propping her elbows on the counter, 'the word you're looking for is _explosive_. Knowing Madrun, she had explosive opinions.'

Jims tried to nod sagely, a difficult demand on his little body, which was even now bent double in laughter. 'And Mrs Grant is…' Another conversational lacuna.

'Irritating?' offered Persis. 'Exasperating? Sombre? Severe?' Thinking all the while that if Cass heard her she would be, probably rightly, taken to task for saying all these things in front of Jims, who was really only the oldest of the children. But he was weeping with laughter, his hands clutching at his sides, and it was so _good_ to see it. She'd invent ever so many more descriptors of Gertrude Grant if it would keep Jims in high spirits. He'd been all tense and coiled when he arrived on the St George St doorstep. Even Hal the porter had noticed, because he'd said as much when he'd rung up to the flat to let her know Jims was there. This – Jims giggling childishly from atop her counter – this was better.

'I was going to say school-teachery,' said Jims, his breath coming back. 'And not everyone _wants_ to talk about the War of the Roses or Wordsworth's Daffodils, or what have you, over dinner.' Also on the list of things she probably should not be doing, Persis thought, was submit to laughter at this observation by Jims. And yet – well it was _true_ , wasn't it?

'Come on,' said Persis, 'can't have you learning to make casserole over Wordsworth and Byron, can we?' Not that she was good at casserole. That was a Cass dish. But then, that hardly seemed the point. Deftly she sorted through the amassed rack of cookery books on their shelf over the sink. Down came, in no particular order, _The Anglo-Chinese Cookbook_ , courtesy of Una Meredith, _Lessons in Cookery_ , pilfered from her own mother's collection, _Everyday Dinners_ – a Cass contribution, and _From our Tuscan Kitchen,_ also Cass. She passed them off to Jims as she went, pausing over the last to observe, 'There should be something, somewhere in one of those to give you a place to start from, don't you think?'

Jims concurred, and they betook themselves to the little kitchen table, where followed an immersive half hour as Jims poured over recipes and their attendant pictures. Now and then Hera appeared and walked over a pertinent page with her delicate, tortoiseshell paws, but she disappeared again when it became all too apparent no one thought her the centre of the universe. All the while Jims read on. Some pages went by without so much as a glance, Jims observing with the turn of a page, 'Anthony won't eat that,' or, 'Liam doesn't like Mussels. Why aren't they spelled the same was as other muscles, Aunt Persis? Do you know?'

Persis did not, but was willing to wander down that diversionary road with him, which explained how they came to be still pouring over cookbooks when Cass returned from her stint at the university library.

'Dr. Abernathy has managed to misplace – ' she began, her voice drifting lilting and bell-like down the hall. But then she saw Jims and whatever Dr Abernathy had managed to misplace was lost in her abrupt conversational about-face at the sight of Jims and Persis at the kitchen table.

'Baking?' she asked.

'Cookery lessons,' said Persis. 'Or that's the theory.'

'Well, you're doing it wrong,' said Cass and moved directly for the kettle. 'To start with, there is _always_ tea.'

Jims began to protest that this wasn't necessary, that he had already had tea _and_ scones with his grandmother, but Persis held up a hand to signify a lost cause.

'I told you' she said, 'people better qualified than me,' and nodded at Cass's bustling back. There was the usual clatter and chatter of crockery as Cass began to excavate the kitchen for appropriate objects of interest.

'Any particular reason?' she inquired of the back of a cupboard. Off went Jims into his spiel about the need for someone not Madrun who could cook meals on the nights the housekeeper had off, and who wasn't his expectant mother. He said all of this while scrutinising and ultimately dismissing an innovative treatment of eel, and so missed the mute inquiry Cass shot over the top of his golden head; _Shouldn't we be doing that?_ Persis shrugged, and gestured at Jims, now intently analysing the ingredients list of a recipe for haricot bean soup. Cass was still running a silent commentary. Persis tilted her head Jims-ward. _Let him be useful_. _He needs to be._

'What's an Egg Raggut?' asked Jims of no one in particular. There was a scramble for explanations, even as Cass conceded the point. Out came the teacups. Jims queried the nature of a Jerusalem Artichoke. ('It looks funny for an artichoke! And is it really from Jerusalem?) Gently, Persis prodded him towards a more immediately achievable recipe. Cass poured out. Jims settled on the mercifully mundane haricot bean soup.

Persis commenced an excursion to the pantry for supplies. Cass paused their culinary strategizing and went to set the gramophone going, sending sounds of something lyrical and soothing drifting down the hall towards them. This was, apparently, the second rule of cooking. Always do it to good music. It sounded like melting chocolate, all warm and rich. _By the waters of Babylon_ , pouring out of the gramophone, _We sat us down…_

'Dvorjak,' said Cass in response to Persis's upraised eyebrow. ' _Biblical Songs, no. 7._ George Herschel singing' So that was it. Persis watched as Cass began subdividing ingredients at the table according to function. She improvised a harmony line to the Dvorjak as she went. It was imperfect and occasionally flat, but it was pleasing to listen to for all that. Periodically Jims picked something up, gave it a meditative look, and set it down again. Hera climbed fastidiously through the open window, leapfrogged onto the table, and attempted to fit her velveteen nose into the milk jug. She was unsuccessful, and swished away in a swirl of insulted feline, this being the latest grievance of her day. Persis handed Jims a paring knife, handle-end first for ease of dicing the thyme. She opened her mouth to caution him, but he beat her to it.

'Not to worry,' he said, as the knife clicked against the table and the Dvorjak crackled along on the gramophone. _Sing us now …one of the songs of Zion…_ 'I'll be careful. I'm terribly grown up you know.'

Wasn't that just the problem. And here she was with nothing to turn back the clock. _Oh Jerusalem,_ sang Herschel from the depths of some invisible earth, _if I should forget thee…_ On a whim, Persis reached across the culinary clutter of haricot tins, garlic cloves, onions, tomatoes and the sentinel bottle of olive oil, plucked an apple from where it resided in the overshadowed fruit bowl, and tossed it Jimsward. He caught it, grinned, and said,'Century, not out.'

'Altogether too early in the game for that,' said Persis and threw another apple in Jims' direction. He caught that, too, one-handed, this time. 'See?' he said, beaming.

'Two centuries.'

'Now you're making up rules,' said Persis. The gramophone clicked to a standstill.

Cass said, smiling, 'I wouldn't know. It's all Greek to me.'

'Hardly,' said Jims, 'or you'd understand what we were on about,' and lobbed an apple at her.

' _Touché_ ,' said Cass as the apple eluded her hands and came to ground under the table. Hera slunk back into the kitchen, apparently with the express purpose of nosing this unexpected bounty. Finding it severely wanting, she stalked off again, aggrieved. Cass retrieved the apple and sent it Jims's way, and he said, 'Much better at bowling, as it turns out, don't you think, Aunt Persis?' Not so grown up after all then, thought Persis. None of them were really – and thank goodness for that

* * *

 _You will have to forgive the purely nonsensical play on cricket Jims and Persis employ. I did look at the rules. Really I did. I once even understood them for five minutes while Charles Collingwood of_ The Archers _fame explained them over Radio 4. He has a lovely voice for explaining things that don't make sense. Sadly for all of us, he stopped explaining and I promptly forgot, so it all dissolves into sheer nonsense here, mostly to preserve my sanity. Not that I had much to start with or anything._


	22. Turn Ye to Me

_Thanks always to those of you reading and/or reviewing. But an especial thanks to the guest of chapter 20 I managed to overlook previously. Mea culpa! Very glad to hear you enjoyed Anne on happiness. She was terrific fun to write._

* * *

Kingsport, 1929

* * *

Mara and Iain were ensconced in the sunroom, weaving rush mats when Pilgrim, old cat of Swallowgate days gave the alarm. Not a known quantity, then, Mara thought; the cat would never have bothered about Jem and Faith, Geordie, Judith, or even the assorted gremlins. And while he wasn't much taken with Kitty and Teddy, neither was Pilgrim liable to hiss at them. A stranger then.

Or so she supposed, mired among the rush mats that warranted that afternoon's effort at engaging Iain's attention. They were supposed to be something to occupy Iain while she ran lines for _A Cup of Kindness_ , only Iain insisted on echoing her, trying impossibly hard to shape adult words with little lips. He was aiming to deliver them with earnestness and solemnity, but having entirely too much fun to cary this off. His eyes crinkled and he ended by shrieking in laughter that was contagious. This was how they missed the click of the door as it came free of the latch, and the faint rustling of leaves it let into the house. Mara _did_ catch the newly green smell of the garden, and the hot-earth scent of after-the-rain but supposed they drifted in on some open window. She was wholly startled by the voice from the hall when it made itself known.

'Sorry,' it said, 'I saw the door was open and I thought it was probably better to come in than risk waking the baby.'

The baby in question, hearing a voice he couldn't place, gave a tremor of indignation and suffered himself to be gathered into maternal arms. Impossible to guess that moments before he had been a veritable parrot as he buried his suntanned face in Mara's shoulder. There followed a clatter of doors as the interloper attempted to navigate the geography of Fox Corner uninstructed, before a slight person, gangly in the way of young girls, tired from travelling and with eyes like wide blue planets, materialised in the doorway. _You're yourself only the oldest of the babies,_ Mara thought, seeing her, in spite of herself. Instead, she shifted Iain to her hip and demanded of the sister presently occupying the sunroom doorway, 'What on _earth_ are you doing here?'

'Hello to you too,' said Mharie McNeilly, stepping forward to envelop sister and nephew in a hug. This close Mara could better register the rings under those wide blue eyes, the smell of outside, coal and ever-present fish that even now was synonymous with Halifax to Mara. At least the fish were a natural hazard of harbour life. It got into skin and under fingers like nothing else. Mara had almost forgotten. Iain, who had never had cause to learn it in the first place, began to fuss.

'Sorry,' said Mharie again, 'Shall I…' she stepped away, reaching uncertainly for the baby.

'You're all right, _a leannan_ ,' said Mara. 'You're not home now.'

 _Obviously,_ said the look Mharie gave her. Mara watched as opposite her, Mharie uncertainly crossed her arms over her chest, fingers tapping a tattoo against her elbows.

'You never did say,' said Mara, 'what the crisis was that brought you here.'

'Who says there's a crisis?' But Mharie's eyes went, if possible, still wider, and her nails plucked at the sleeves of her blouse.

'There generally is when family come calling,' said Mara. 'It was – Alec – last time.'

This was not quite, Mara thought, what she had brought everything from murder mysteries to babies in need of minding, to surplus Ceylon tea - 'because you like it better than I do,' Faith had said in the face of Mara's protestation that Una never meant it for Fox Corner. Relatives though - relatives in Kingsport almost invariably came because of a crisis. Alec dead, or else the Spanish Flu going round Swallowgate, or...She could not say this, with Mharie opposite her, thin and tired, her fingers plucking at her blouse. So Mara spoke of family in the dictionary sense and retreated, of necessity, to the sofa.

Mharie followed her, folding herself into the far section of the settle, knees tucked carefully under her torso, Alec's ghost a palpable thing between them, heavy and leaden. They sat there mute, not knowing what to say or how to say it, so that when Mara hazarded a look at her sister, she was struck by how strikingly small Mharie was, limbs compressed among the depths of the cushions, more the child that had attended her wedding, all limbs and scabbed knees, than the young woman who had let herself into the house minutes ago. And she still hadn't said what the trouble was.

'It will be easier over tea maybe,' said Mara, making no question of this. Instead, she handed Iain off to his girl-aunt, who took him gratefully, babies having ever featured in what the McNeilly girls had called normalcy.

Looking through from the kitchen, Mara could just see them, Mharie curved faintly around the shape of wee Iain, his downy, talc-scented head pillowed on her chest. Somewhere in the minutiae of the Halifax house's attic – or perhaps in what was left of Mara's hope chest – was a photo of Mara holding Mharie in not dissimilar fashion, taken shortly before she had gone for Redmond. It had been one of Alec's snaps, of course. Hard to say what had become of it, between the war, the loss of Anchorage and the new house.

The kettle began to hiss and Mara lingered over it, warming the teapot and fussing with leaves, savouring the smooth, floral notes of Ceylon. _You like it better than I do_ , Faith had said, and Mara found now as she stood and lingered over the preparation, that it smelled as much of family as it did of spice. The tea began to steep and Mara hunted out the last of that week's scones. From the look of her, Mharie hadn't eaten that day; she was disinclined to inquire into the other night. What was it Judith sometimes said, talking of the gremlins – _I_ _f I ask, I'll get an answer_?

'I couldn't stay,' said Mharie, not looking at her, when Mara returned with the tea tray. She flung this out into the sunroom, apparently confident it would be dismissed out of hand, because she then burrowed into the corner of the sofa in anticipation of some predetermined backlash.

'No?' said Mara, handing over a piece of Mull pottery, full of golden Ceylon spice. Scent of family. Experimentally Mara held out the milk jug. Mharie took it awkwardly because of Iain still cocooned in the crook of her arm. The sun shifted overhead and came seeping through the window, warm for the season and heavy against the autumnal twill of Mara's skirt. Mharie squinted against it and said, 'They won't let me carry on with school.'

'No,' said Mara again, 'they wouldn't.'

'You did,' said Mharie, sipping at her tea prematurely and then sucking a breath between her teeth when it scalded the roof of her throat. In spite of herself Mara smiled; Helen and Kitty were always doing that, too.

'And they won't tell me how you did it,' said Mharie, apparently as an afterthought. Mara laughed.

'No,' Mara said. 'Well, Mam wouldn't. The rows we had over it – ask Senga. She'll maybe remember.' _So would the others_ hung heavy and unspoken between them, their dead weighty and surely immeasurable in their vastness. _Rab, Tam, Jeanie, Jessie, Duncan…_ it was a long list, their unnamed dead. But Mharie wasn't on it. She was sitting here in the sunroom looking not a day over twelve, so that Mara had to wonder how she'd ever purchased a train ticket out of Halifax in the first place. Or perhaps it was just that Mara could still remember her knobby-kneed and scabbed with climbing over the lobster traps and swimming out past the pier – younger still, as the cherubic baby in the photo' Alec had snapped all those years ago.

But at least, Mara thought, they were feeling their way into how to hold a conversation.

Now Mharie worried a seam in the sofa and said with conviction, 'But you did convince her. Mam, I mean.'

Mara pressed her fingers to her temples and found they smelled of the rushes she and Iain had plaited earlier. She said from behind them, 'I'd not call it that, exactly.' But Mharie was still looking at her, blue eyes unflinching as Alec's had ever been, so Mara went on, 'What I refused to do was marry Callum Inness. And it wasn't that that won her over, were you curious.'

That got a laugh from Mharie, a thready, tired sounding thing, but it sent a flash of colour into her cheeks and she looked better for it. More like the golden girl Mara remembered, less the harried traveller who had appeared in the sunroom so lately. More like family, too, though that might have been the sun in Mara's eyes.

Mharie said, 'I don't suppose you'd tell me what did?'

'A bad combination of Tam, Alec and Da taking my part over it - insisting I be allowed to try for the scholarship.'

'Right,' said Mharie. _And Alec and Tam are dead_ went unsaid. Besides which, neither had ever been much in the way of championing Mharie – God, had Tam even had cause to _meet_ her? Possibly, Mara thought, but she had been so young in those days, such a slip of a baby... Much more likely, Mara thought that Tam had forgot this slip of a baby sister. _Mara_ hardly recalled her except in flashes of Redmond holidays and photograph stills. 'I don't suppose your talking to Mam…'

'I thought you were wanting to win this argument?' said Mara, and earned another laugh, slightly more steady this time. Then, because Mara was curious, 'What is it you're angling to do, anyway, _a leannan_?'

'I don't _know_ ,' said Mharie, vexed. 'They keep asking and asking I don't _know_ , and – I don't know – why do I have to, anyway? Can't I – isn't it enough to want to know _more_? Does that make sense?'

It did, of course it did. But then, there it was, the nub of the thing, its heart. Impossible to communicate to their mother, of course. To so many of the Halifax people. And those that had understood all dead now. Or nearly.

It occurred to Mara that there was a school not so far away. The Carlisle gremlins went there; Christopher was in the infants' class. Naomi Blake had liked it well enough to have tried for a teaching place there. It had its failings, Mara supposed, all schools did. A failure to recognise the particular brilliance of Helen Blythe, for instance but… It came home to Mara that she had never yet answered her sister. Now she inclined her head, _Yes_. _It is enough. More than enough._ In a world reeling from change after seismic change, it made all manner of sense not to rush unthinking into the future, and she said so.

'Then I can stay?' Tea tumbled free of the Mull pottery and dappled the smocking of Mharie's dress with little amber beads that caught the sunlight. Instinctively, Mara plucked a handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed at them, even as her sister swatted her hand away. She was laughing; this was good.

'Phone Senga,' said Mara. 'Tell her where you are.'

' _You_ know where I am.'

'Mm, and someone at home ought to too. Ring Senga. She won't have your head for it. She hasn't the time.'

 _She's got Nancy's children now too and…_ It occurred to Mara to wonder how she had ever surfaced from the 'flu without half a dozen nieces and nephews to minister to. Had it really been that she wasn't living perpetually in Halifax on her mother's doorstep? It seemed no reason at all. Mharie had not moved from the sofa. If anything she had buried herself deeper into it.

'Alastair will tell you,' said Mara to her, 'I made him do the same, when he came with news of Alec. _And_ he'd been sent on purpose. Ring home. I'm not much bothered who, it will go all round the houses however it goes. But I'll not have them worrying for you added to all the rest of this.' She gestured at the sunroom, Mharie with Iain crooked under her arm, the tea with its bounty of Ceylon, the scones and strawberry jam. Mharie went.

One of Senga's girls got hold of the mouthpiece and only passed it on to her mother under duress, squealing with excitement that sent static rippling down the line, giddy at being declared messenger. Faintly Mara could hear the pips crackling over the line, the sound of her would-be sister's exhaustion. The last time she had sounded this wrung out, they had sat up nights at the Keracher house trying to stave off the 'flu with no very good luck.

'Here,' said Mharie, nudging Mara's elbow, 'for you.'

Senga said, 'I hate to ask it, but you couldn't hazard a guess as to when we'll get her back?'

Mara squinted into the setting sun, which streamed full into the telephone nook, purple and pink in the gloaming. Mara shook her head. Then recalling the telephone necessarily rendered such a gesture invisible, said, 'I'll sort that out, shall I?'

'Please.'

* * *

And yet, they were sitting at the dining-room table _not_ discussing it when Shirley came home to them. That is, they were talking about the Kingsport school, what Mara knew of it; subjects, teachers, entry marks and fine details that had nothing to do with Halifax or their mother. Which was fine, Mara reasoned, inasmuch as it would surprise Senga not at all when she got to hear of it.

That was how Shirley found them, full of a story about tubercular cattle. Seeing them, he broke off mid-sentence to take stock of Mharie, still wide-eyed and pale at the table.

To say the last time he had seen Mharie she had been slighter, smaller and in attendance at their wedding, Shirely surfaced her name with remarkable quickness.

'Down to visit?' he asked as if it was in the usual order of things to come home midweek to unannounced company. And to be fair, it broadly was. The company wasn't typically spontaneously manifested relatives on Mara's side, that was all. Mharie shrugged. Iain, kneeling on the improbable combination of a _Britannica_ volume and the family bible said, 'Yes,' with due solemnity.

'We're negotiating that,' said Mara.

The _Britannica_ wavered precariously and Shirley pulled his son into his lap, the better to take in the story of the familial wrangling that had brought Mharie to Fox Corner. Implicit in the retelling was _I don't want to go back_. All Mharire said on the subject was, 'I couldn't stay, and I thought of here. It doesn't have to be for long.'

Then they resumed their talk of the Kingsport school, as if this was also perfectly ordinary conversation of an early evening. No one mentioned Helen's Miss Watson, who had so lately failed to be a vampire.

* * *

Mara was making up the spare room when Shirley appeared. The sun was sloping gently towards the rolling green lawn so beloved of the resident foxes, and the birds singing their evensong. On the dresser the last of the lilacs had dried, and their scent dissolved; it made the room smell faintly of dust. With effort Mara pushed open the window to admit the cool freshness of evening air. It stuck as it always did, this time of year, only coming free when Shirley joined her and cajoled the other side of the sash into rising.

When he had done it he said, 'She's welcome to stay, you know.'

'There's no need for that,' said Mara. She crossed the room to sit on the bed, absently slipping a case over a pillow.

'No need,' said Shirley, 'but you'd like it?'

'I didn't say that,' said Mara. 'And anyway,' starting on the mattress, 'you cannot _possibly_ want – '

'I very much want you to have what you want.'

'Mm,' said Mara. 'There's a difference between that and the sudden and indefinite acquisition of family.'

The sheet Mara was folding stretched preternaturally taut and when she looked up she found Shirley opposite her, folding hospital corners of his own. He caught her eye and shrugged, much to say this was a war habit that time had yet to unravel. He said, 'But she _is_ family. Whereas Jem and Faith – '

'Never flinched about taking on Kitty. I remember. Teddy, too. And we're not them. Your sister isn't trying to hand you reporters with nowhere to live.'

'What, shunt them into your house?' said Shirley, and smiled. 'I'm not sure even _Di_ would dare. Anyway, it wouldn't be indefinite. It would be for what – four years? Until she set off for Redmond anyway.'

'Two,' said Mara. They began to unfold a quilt between them.

Shirley said, 'No time at all then. And you want her here.'

'You keep saying that as if I've said it at some earlier junction.'

'You looked it, Ariel.'

Mara sat down on the quilt and began to trace the seams of the blocks. Little diamond pinwheels in her mother's patient piecework, white and blue and floral by alteration. Hardly ideal, under the circumstances, but warm enough. Besides, it wasn't as if Mara had developed her own taste for sitting up into the small hours stitching and piecing until the pads of her fingers went raw. That was for Mam, and for Jeanie, Nancy too. 'I'd like her to have somewhere to stay,' said Mara. 'She can't very well go home. They'll pull her to pieces without meaning to. The aunt I went to all that time ago – well she isn't there now. There's a lot of them that aren't there now.'

 _Malcolm, dead of the war, and Tam of the 'flu; Jeanie with her piecing, wee Cameron named for Mam's people, and little Rabbie named for his uncle; Alec, whose fetch she had seen, and Jessie with her dancing feet_ , on, and on it went. Too many to name in the stillness of the spare room with its newmade bed and the dusty smell of dried lilacs, the cool smell of the evening. Shirley crossed the room and joining her on the edge of the bed, folding her hand under his and Mara nodded. He said, 'Kitty will love her. So will the gremlins probably. She must be – what do we think, David Carlisle's age?'

'Simon's, more nearly,' said Mara. 'Though if you're going to play at matchmaking, she really will end up on the Larkrise doorstep.'

Shirley shook his head, laughing. He said, 'Matchmake for you sister? I shouldn't dream of it. I was more thinking of school sets.'

'I'll hold you to that.'

'Do. I'll finish with this, shall I? You go tell her.'

* * *

Mara went. She found Mharie out on the back porch, limbs balled tightly together on the steps. The midges were out too, undeterred by the smell of residual smoke as it curled from the chimney. Mharie gave them no mind, startling only when Mara sat down next to her, nudged her shoulder with an arm.

'Sorry,' said Mharie, not for the first time that day.

'You'll take cold, sitting out here,' said Mara, and touched her fingers to Mharie's cheek to show the difference. Mharie squealed, much in the way Mara remembered her doing in those last days at Anchorage, before Redmond and the War. Then Mharie laughed and snaked her fingers around Mara's neck to warm them. A sickle moon came into flower and Mara tugged her sister upright and into the house.

They drifted to the spare room, where the sash was up still and the boughs of a nearby cedar were straining for ingress, the faintly smoky smell of it chasing away the last traces of lilac. Shirley had turned the quilt down at the corner, so that the linen underneath was cool with outside air, the smell of the cedar. Mara perched carefully on the edge of the bed and Mharie eased under the covers, slight and slippery as an elm, the peter pan collar of her nightgown just visible over the topmost of the windmill blocks. It made her look almost as childish as Iain in the moonlight.

'You haven't got to do that,' Mharie said, when Mara mentioned the school, 'that isn't why I came down.'

'No,' said Mara, 'but, you're here now.' She smoothed the golden head ensconced on the pillows with their silk shaded covers and offered her a smile. They hardly knew each other, she realised, feeling the pulse of her sister's heart under her fingers. 'It's what I'd have done for the others,' she said, and hoped it was enough. Mharie offered her a smile like a lotus, slow-dawning and sleepy. 'Not Jeanie,' Mharie said drowsily. 'She'd never have needed it.'

'Jessie then.'

'Mm,' said Mharie. 'Maisie too. Wee Maisie would have got up to all sorts.'

'She gave that a pretty good go as it was,' said Mara, and kissed Mharie's temple. 'Catkin will tell you – Nan.' Then, as she tugged her sister's collar straight, 'If it comes to that, Maisie has a cousin or six who will make up the difference.' Finally, as an afterthought, Mharie's laughter ghosting away on the cedar-perfumed breeze, 'I'm sorry I wasn't there. Afterwards.'

Mharie shook her head. 'You're here now. I only hoped you would be.'


	23. Green Worlds

In theory everyone, which was to say Susan Baker, assumed Mharie McNeilly came to Fox Corner to help look after its resident prince. (This being, incidentally, Susan Baker's actual words on the subject, Fox Corner being otherwise bereft of royals to the mundane inhabitants.) And in the way of family mythology, because someone said it, everyone else believed it. It would free up Judith Carlisle, was the theory, Judith being presumably kept busy with baby Nesha ( _not_ a name as per Susan Baker) and the general tumble (this actually was the accepted collective noun, as per Uncle Jem) of Carlisle gremlins. Thus Susan Baker started it, but Anne Blythe continued it, as did Gilbert. It was days, or perhaps hours, before the Merediths of Glen St Mary had joined in the round robin, and by that circuitous route it travelled onwards to Nan and Jerry (popularly The Wandering Merediths to family), and thence to a _very_ confused Poppy in Ontario. She read this in a letter, blinked a bit, read it against Mara's account of her sister's arrival, and then passed both on to Peter to confirm that he, too, did not have to squint to spot the difference.

Anyway, that was the theory. In practice Mharie had school during the day, which left great swathes in which, as per the Susan doctrine, baby Iain would have been unattended. Not even Faith, so laconic about her own children's exposure to such things as autopsies and doctoring – 'It's only what we do for a living' was her line – could have countenanced that. And anyway, the thing was practically impossible. The fact was that there was always someone waiting in the wings to take the children.

Though Judith Carlisle _did_ occasionally get a reprieve; that part of the Susan doctrine was right. This happened by way of depositing baby Nesha, who was rapidly becoming Nattie to family (but which still wasn't a Baker-approved name), on the Fox Corner doorstep. Or she and Iain might find their way into the capable hands of Teddy Lovall, or, though less often, under the reluctant ministrations of Kitty Foster. It might be that Faith was running the surgery from Larkrise and could take them in her cobbled-together nursery off the back of the house. On those days they ran and fetched bandages and held pins for her and were declared to be 'very useful indeed.'

Then there was the newly-arrived Mharie, Jem and Dog Tuesday (they were definitely a double act), and Helen, who was herself only a gremlin but desperate to be an adult to somebody. Nor was it unheard of for the Blakes of Martyrs' Manse to volunteer themselves for a spot of child-minding as occasion warranted. On still other occasions entirely, it might fall out that Judith was preoccupied, Faith at the hospital, and Teddy and Kitty embroiled in their various jobs, in which instance, Iain Blythe went with his mother to the Crown Imperial.

No one ever mentioned this to Susan, because if she had never fully come to terms with Walter's poetry she was still less reconciled to the idea of _Theatre_. The idea that her beloved brown boy snuggled contented into a nest of his own manufacture (read red velveteen cushions repurposed from elsewhere in the wings) while various adults ran lines and blocked scenes would have shocked her. To leave a boy like Iain in a place like _that_ , well, it didn't bear thinking about, and that you may tie to. As for the idea that Iain, age four and precocious with it, had discovered for himself a particular three-legged stool and relocated it to the wings of the stage the better to watch rehearsals – it would have shocked Susan to her could tie to that, too.

Iain adored it. He loved the musty, dusty smell of his mother's dressing room, and the plush of the cushions he curled up on, first, as a baby, to sleep, but latterly to read. He loved the clatter and chatter and rush of the place, everyone coming and going and trying to do ten things at once. He chased bolts of fabric as they tumbled glad riot off their shelves with childish, chubby hands. He ran giddily down the hallway, his arms aeroplanes and Hartley Evans, house porter, cheerily on his heels. He learned to read off the playbills, the ink sharp-smelling and still drying, his fingers growing black with exposure to it.

Susan would have disavowed it all, the ink, the velveteen cushions, the unravelling fabric and impromptu games of tig. She _might_ have relented had she seen he was in a fair way to be petted; if he adored the theatre, the theatre adored him, too. He was the first of the babies to belong to the Evensong Aunts as he called them – the girls his mother had lived with after Swallowgate and the war but before his father – and they worshipped him for it. And whereas the pre-Fox Corner period of Mara Blythe's life had always seemed strange and nebulous to Iain, who could not picture her anywhere _but_ Fox Corner, with the Mull Pottery, resident foxes and the cedars under the window, afternoons at The Crown Imperial had the weird effect of putting all that in context. There was Ianthe with her tragic, almost purple, eyes, and Magda, whose English in spite of her best efforts always carried a hint of elsewhere about it, never quite settling into theatre-house neutrality. Then there was Deirdre, who looked severe but wasn't and had given up the theatre years before Iain was born. This detail did not, however, mean she had foresworn the covenant of the Evensong girls, so she was always dropping in unannounced. That left only delicate, dainty Darla, whose name no one ever quite believed her parents gave her. It was apt though; everyone did love Darla. And she told all the best stories.

These were usually about Evensong and the things the girls had got up to living there. The meals they had skipped to save money, the plays they had put on, or how – and this thrilled Iain immeasurably – they used to take turns to lie down in the road, pretending to have fainted. They did this whenever they had to perform or rehearse outside Kingsport, whenever a vehicle was oncoming to save on the train fare. The thought of Mam doing this, of lying down in the dusty road when usually she was so practical at home or elegant at the theatre was inconceivable to Iain. Darla (he never called her aunt; she was the only one who wouldn't let him) would laugh and say, 'What, did you think we never had lives before?'

Iain, who didn't, who had thought exactly this, would say _yes,_ yes he did, and they would both laugh heartily over it.

'Magda was best at it,' Mam might say, joining in. 'Magda was always thinnest; people were in the way of believing she might faint.'

'But they all fell in love with your mother,' Magda would say, which was disconcerting in the extreme. 'Not that she noticed, and of course that was the most effective thing she could have done.' This made patently no sense to Iain, but he never said so; he sat at their feet and drank in these stories about a time before he had existed, about a world older than he was.

Mam would shrug and say, 'Oh, I don't know. There were enough that ate out of Ianthe's hand, and happily.'

'Just as well,' practical, sturdy Deirdre would say. 'They saved us doing the fainting stunt by the light of the moon, and that's a fact. Much good your stand-offishness was on _that_ score.'

Mam would roll her shoulders and toss her head, and maybe say, 'I really don't know what else you think I could have done, under the circumstances.' Magda would agree, laughing, wrapping an arm loyally around Mam's shoulders.

'That's right,' she'd say. 'She couldn't help being attached – and anyway, it got us out of several fixes, that did.'

Not that they ever told Iain what kind of fixes, not that Iain didn't ask. Susan Baker might have been happy to know there were some things not even the Evensong Aunts dared talk about around little pitchers with big ears.

They were a disparate people that somehow came together into a cohesive whole whether it be to lament the cherry orchards of Madam Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya or exclaim over the antics of Hedda Gabbler. They laughed over the gulling of Benedict and Beatrice, and Iain laughed with them, having learned the humour of that play young. They were changeable as sunlight, were the Evensong Aunts and their auxiliary actors and they flashed like it too, sparkling, glittering people who stepped into more worlds than Iain had heretofore dared dream of and lived in them a while.

The effect was mesmeric, and Iain, sitting in the wings on his three-legged stool, was duly mesmerised. The stool had a wobble to it, and listed left if it was not placed exactly so on the uneven floor of the back stage. So Iain learned to a nicety the uneven slope of the floor and the grooves therein, and simultaneously how to sit precise and still on his improvised chair so as not to get underfoot. If this sentiment occasionally drew a raised eyebrow from one of his adults as being preternaturally grown-up, Iain only shrugged clumsily in the manner of his father and stumbled over his words in a rush to articulate how much he felt the luxury of this place, though he did not word it quite that way.

'I _like_ it,' he said to a baffled Kitty when she observed she could never have sat still for so long, even now.

He learned lines by osmosis, not trying with any great effort, but finding the repetitions imprinted on his little brain until he could prompt them – his mother most often, because he knew her speeches best, but not only her. The first time he had done it, the play was _Easy Virtue_ – another thing Susan Baker was never to hear about – and it was an accident. There was a fractionally too-long silence and Iain, hands clasped under his chin, opened his mouth to fill it. They thought it was somewhere between a great joke and an excellent party trick. Iain took for granted that this was what all little boys did when spending an afternoon with their mothers.

He learned exits the better to shuffle his stool out of the way of oncoming traffic, and entrances likewise. He retrieved objects – just the little ones at first – that he knew were going to be wanted in upcoming scenes. There were people, he'd learn later, whose job this properly was, but on those sun hazy afternoons (they were always sunny and always afternoons in Iain's memory of them) they tolerated his interference. He was the Imp of the Crown Imperial, by all accounts, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

If the stool became too uncomfortable, or Iain's back got stiff with sitting, he'd retreat to his mother's dressing room and the cushions he'd amassed in its far corner, and relaxed against them. She would find him there afterwards and wrangle opinions from him; what he liked, what he didn't, what he thought should be different. He had a very distinct memory of saying, once, about _Midsummer Night's Dream_ , about her Helena, 'She's all fire and sparks, but different to you.'

It wasn't quite what he'd meant to say, but he was little, and it was hard then to articulate quite what he meant about her performances. Isobel, later, came much more naturally to it. But at the time, in the dressing room with its mustiness and the hint of her perfume, none of this mattered, because Mam sat down among the cushions and proceeded to prod him about it; different how? Good? Indifferent?

Long afterwards he'd beat Nattie (she would be Nattie by then) for a book prize in English, and he'd cite these afternoons dissecting plays as the source. Nattie would toss her head and say, exasperated just how unfair this was, as if there weren't nine in ten things she didn't outclass Iain in anyway.

Or still later, as she ran her lines for _Five Chelsea Lane_ , Iain would say to his mother, 'Shouldn't she – I mean you – be more afraid?' By then, of course, he was old enough to feel disloyal saying it. But she never seemed to mind; they sat in the dressing room inhaling must, dust and the whisper of her perfume – _L'heur Blue_ it was called, Iain had learned by then – and debate the point academically. Just how afraid was Bella Manningham, and what did that look like?

* * *

They all had a version of this, Iain knew. Helen's, unaccountably, was to affix herself like a limpet to Uncle Jem and follow him to the police surgery, where he was wont to declare her the best assistant he could ask for. Why she would want to go poking about in people's innards was a point of everlasting mystery to Christopher as much as Iain, but there it was. It horrified Teddy, who was always bending over backwards to keep them away from murders and all that. It also made for very uncomfortable games of Doctor, since as per Helen's rules, the patient she was poking around in had to be dead. Christopher, far from being her assistant, became the intrepid police detective, Ben or whichever Carlisle was on hand more than happy to be his deputy. Somehow, what with the patient being dead, Iain got saddled with the burial, which lead to such improbabilities as _for as much as it hath pleased almighty God to take from us this cat…_ even as said cat ran streaking and indignant from the room, leaving Iain to say the last rights over void space. Or if Innocent, or Pilgrim or whichever Fox Corner cat it was could not be conscripted, _to take from us this dog_ , said while compulsively rubbing Tuesday's belly to ensure he stayed perfectly still, his belly and feet pointed skyward, unembarrassedly exposing his anatomy to their little funeral party. Provided he was kept in tummy rubs, Dog Tuesday was the best of these victims, totally unfazed by Helen's declarations of cyanide poisoning, or death by asphyxia, or once, gruesomely, decapitation.

If Iain protested that what this really made Helen was a Vet like his father, well, no one listened to him, did they? Least of all Helen, who rolled expressive golden-caramel eyes and told him to _imagine_ that Tuesday was a brutally murdered human, or a spy, or whatever occasion warranted. Iain rolled his eyes right back and reckoned that after all those long hours in the theatre, he knew at _least_ as much about imagining things as Helen. Possibly more. _If we shadows have offended,_ etc, etc.

Needless to say, no one told Susan Baker. Where would they even have _started_? Sophy became their resident reporter, bickering with Christopher over what she could write in the paper and wrangling for information in a manner that would have done Kitty proud.

You could tell this – the would-be journalism – was Sophy's version of those luxuriant hours on the three-legged stool from the games she played with Kitty. They had one where you came up with headlines for local catastrophes off the cuff – say a glass of spilt milk ( _Domicile lachrymose over lacteal crisis_ ; Kitty) or a toppled game of dominoes ( _Local Dachshund first canine winner of dominoes championship;_ Sophy). You had half a minute to compose your headline, and they all played, but it was really Kitty and Sophy's game; they were best at it.

It was all gloriously unorthodox. No one could agree how it had begun. In one version it was Aunt Judith who was busy, in another it was Iain's mother. Whoever told it, the only really usual thing was this cavalier swapping of children across households so that the poor women of St Margaret's Anglican, or Martyrs' Mission, or even Sacred Heart Church couldn't begin to tell which child was attached to which household. And yet none of them would have had it any other way.

Of course, no one told Susan Baker that, either. What Susan Baker never told _them_ was that being a wily, intelligent woman – a heroine even – she had guessed it all a long time ago, and wouldn't have altered a thing.


End file.
